Gloria Estefan Quotes

I don't feel pressure to act like other people or rap like other people, because I just can't.

People get sucked into being so show-bizy. I mean this is show biz, but I just can't do anything that's not in my DNA.

Artists can be themselves. They don't have to pretend to be somebody they're not.

I just tend to admire people who go for what they believe in, like David Lynch for example, and just say what goes through their heads, and are not afraid of people not accepting them. I have no respect for people who deliberately try to be weird to attract attention, but if that's who you honestly are, you shouldn't try to "normalize yourself". It's a fine line.

I would hate to make music and people love me for something that isn't me.

I mean, if I was living to please people, I'd have never been in a band at all. I wouldn't have anything awesome around. I'd just be bored.

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

I don't really have a gimmick or a 'thing.' I'm one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

I'm not going to be able to play it like somebody else.

I'm completely unlike a lot of other performers in the past who have been forgiven or come to terms with the real world because they tell everyone their performance is 'just a show.' And so, people say, 'Oh, it's OK then. We don't care. He's not really a bad person.' It's not just a show for me. It's my life.

What Hollywood truly wants is for people to be themselves. I think what it's designed for is to kind of turn people into something and just make them saleable. But what it really stands for, what it really loves, are people who are unafraid to be themselves, and as you can see, these are people who are excelling in their careers.

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.

I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.

I don't have to carry myself as anybody that I'm not, and people picked up on it.

If you think about what everyone else will think, you forget to just make music.

I can only be myself, and if I have to suffer for that, that's okay, because to pretend to be somebody else - I tried that, it's terrible.

The magic to our show and, I think, any successful show, be it on the radio or TV, is every person being true to themselves.

If I can't be honest with music, forget it.

This goes for our songwriting as well as our success as a band - the minute we stopped chasing what we thought people wanted to hear and started writing things that moved us, that's when people started paying attention.

I think that was my biggest fear - censoring myself and putting myself into a cookie cutter to be representative. But I think what I realised is we don't need that.

We spent a couple of years trying to be what we thought people wanted us to be, what the press thought we should be, doing what the company wanted. Finally we just said 'Sod it. This is what we do best. We're best at making pop records that people enjoy and having fun and entertaining them.'

The bands that do well don't get caught up in fads; they are just true to themselves.

You can filter certain stuff - it depends what artist you are - but you're never going to be true to yourself if you're worried about what other people think.

If you pretend to be somebody that you're not when you write songs - and I did that on some of the early Styx albums - nobody cares about what you have to say.

When I was working for WWE I felt like I was trying to make someone else's vision happen instead of my own. And I think that's where I became less true to myself and I think it showed in my work.