Charles Mingus Quotes

I'm starting to find my own style.

Be yourself. It's the most important part of anything that you do. It's not fashion. It can be whatever you want to do.

Style means you have a real curiosity about yourself and then you express it. Having style is not copying somebody else.

It's great to get to make something in your own voice.

I take a little bit from everybody and add that to my life to make me, me. I wanna be nobody else but Future. When you look at me, I want you to say, 'Future.' The way I talk, the way I dress, there's nobody in the world but me.

People said when I started, 'Why don't you just copy your father's style?' I had to be myself, singing my songs in my own way.

Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

You can't try to be somebody you're not; that's not style.

I think being appropriate is what you have to do. I think these trend things are terrible, like 'Ten Things You Must Have.' Why must you have them? They're a 'must' for some people, but for some they're not. It's silly. Again, it's all a matter of knowing who you are. You'll never run out of ideas once you do. But it's hard work and some people don't want to put in the time or effort. So they don't. And that's their issue. I don't sit in judgment on how they look.

Finally and most important of all, authenticity means that you must do what you do the way you do it and allow everyone else the same courtesy. There was a time I wanted to be like every famous writer that ever lived. I tried to copy styles, reframe information, use similar artwork. I almost drove myself crazy! Now I just do what I do. I have mentors. There are people whose work I admire, but I write the way I write. I eat the way I eat. I dress the way I dress. I can't believe that God made us each so unique only to have us do everything the same way.

Be yourself, no matter what they say.

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.

The worst thing you can do is say to yourself, "I want to be just like somebody else." You have to absorb knowledge from someone else, but ultimately you have to find your own voice.

Throw away my book: you must understand that it represents only one of a thousand attitudes. You must find your own. If someone else could have done something as well as you, don’t do it. If someone else could have said something as well as you, don’t say it—or written something as well as you, don’t write it. Grow fond only of that which you can find nowhere but in yourself, and create out of yourself, impatiently or patiently, ah! that most irreplaceable of beings.

Be true to yourself. Establish your own style and stick to it.

I think that my father would find it so confusing that people want to imitate him. Not because he didn't have confidence in who he was, but because he never imitated anybody. He was his own person.

I personally do not listen to a lot of music. It helps keep my mind free. I don't want to sound like someone else from the get-go. I want to express myself and the world in my head.

He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.

I've never really tried to copy anyone; I like to have my own style.

My style is all to myself.

I didn't start to work until I realized what it was I had to offer. I stopped imitating performers I admired and started just being myself.

During 'Hawthorne', I was constantly trying not to be too outrageous and keep it serious. This has been so refreshing for me because it's such a good outlet for the inner me to just be. That's the whole point of 'Glee' anyways - to just be who you are and that's enough. I really feel that way on set.

To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that way.

I don't chase what I hear on the radio. I try not to compete with anybody.