David Foster Wallace Quotes

If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.

I'd like to walk that fine line between the authentic artist self and the manufactured artist self. I'd like to exist outside of a set of expectations or assumptions about what the Kehinde Wiley brand is. And I'd like to walk towards something that's a bit more unpredictable, human.

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

As long as you're true to you, you believe it and you make others believe it, then what you're doing is just art. If you give everybody a blank canvas and some paint, not everybody's picture is going to be exactly the same, but it's still art. I just do what I do.

To me, what makes an artist is a unique personality that they're not afraid to let show.

You should be able to do you. That's what differentiates an artist from a singer.

Creative instinct is personal.

An artist must be very careful not to look for models. As soon as one artist takes another as model, he is lost. There is no other point of departure than reality.

As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.

Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)

I'm going to work with Dan Clowes. After Charlie Kaufman, it's hard to fill up the gap. It's hard to find somebody who... A lot of writers, I can clearly see the desire of succeeding before the desire of expressing themselves. Sometimes people get upset when you want to be different. You were talking about "whimsical," which is a nice word. But sometimes they use the word "quirky" in the pejorative sense. I get frustrated, because they feel like I'm doing whatever I want, and there is no ground, and I don't really care. They feel it's cynical. But I don't think I have any cynicism in me.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

Whatever is about you that is translated into your art, that's gonna keep you completly original and fresh and I just think that, that's just the best advice I can give, to an artist creatively.

I learned early in my writing career that if I try to tailor a song for someone else, I'm usually off base. They're usually looking for something from you with your character.

If you're trying to please everyone, then you're not going to make anything that is honestly yours, I don't think, in the long run.

The reason I put make-up on or wear the costume is to try and find my own style. It's like my guitar style - I'm just trying to be an original artist.

If you are a creative person, you try to create things that are an extension of yourself.

Just trying to be different - when I hear something - I don't like to go trampling on other people's sounds.

The music is a personal expression, like art. It is something that you like doing that comes from within, and is an expression that comes from God. That is why artists are beautiful and why people who copy are not really artistic.

If you look at the common denominator of all the comics who have had big success, it's being true to their nature... that's what takes a long time to learn.

When I looked at people like Goya and Pina Bausch, the message I got was just do what you're passionate about. Don't think about what other people are going to say or how they're going to receive your work. Just be your work.

I'm not trying to make beats that are better than somebody else's. I'm trying to make beats that are genuine to me.

Most female artists - to do what you have to do and to be as honest as you have to be, to be as selfish as you have to be, as tunnel-visioned as you have to be to make art, not entertainment - you can't compromise, really.

I don't feel I have to be Jackson Browne. Still, I like to say something.