Wislawa Szymborska Quotes

It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.

Genius is personal, decided by fate, but it expresses itself by means of system. There is no work of art without system.

Rant would tell people: 'You're a different human being to everybody you meet.

I'm still doing me. I try to come up with different concept for my shows, you gotta keep the people interested, but I'm still me.

I used to sing like Nat King Cole. I mean he was the guy when I was comin' up, and you know, man, people used to say of me, "Damn, he sure do sound like Nat King Cole." But there was a day, and luckily for me it was early, when I woke up and asked myself, "Well, when are the ask me to sing because I sound like me?" So my advice is, never do anything that you don't like.

I get slightly irritated by people who say they're natural rebels because it just means that they're going to be against whatever anybody does, which is almost like saying you might as well leave it as it is. I'm naturally quite conformist, really. If I go to a country and they say, "You've got to drive on the right," I'm not going to drive on the left to show that I'm different. I'm able to stick to the law. I'm not a soldier for anything, either. I'm only a singer and I don't think it makes a difference what we sing.

Maybe in any art you have to be wholly you in the context of whatever you're doing.

To be different is a negative motive, and no creative thought or created thing grows out of a negative impulse. A negative impulse is always frustrating. And to be different means ‘not like this’ and ‘not like that.’ And the ‘not like’—that’s why postmodernism, with the prefix of ‘post,’ couldn’t work. No negative impulse can work, can produce any happy creation. Only a positive one.

There is no old Adam Young, there is no new Adam Young, merely different colors and different brushstrokes over the same canvas.

I don't care what people say about me and what they think about me. I care about my team and I care about myself. Lots of people watch hockey, and I think everybody has different thinking.

I wanted to go in a different direction, artistically. But having somebody like Terry[Crews] in it was your ace in the hole. That makes it very strong, so I definitely had to jump in with both feet.

From where you sit, it may seem that certain people should know better. People are who they are and do what they do whether or not you like it or agree with them. We each have different lessons to learn. We each take a different path to our lessons.

I hope women feel confident with themselves and realize that we don't all have to look alike or be the same size to be beautiful. I hope they feel like representing what it means to be an individual and to remain comfortable in your own skin.

Own what you are, and I mean whether that's art, or whether that's fashion, or whether that's music, or whether that's acting, or whether that's politics, or whether that's literature; it's own what you are, and grab it, and, you know, be as prolific as possible.

Man is, above all, he who creates.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.

Femininity for me means happiness and freedom...freedom of being who you are in whatever shape or size you come in.

I have a set of images that go around the world in an art gallery installation. Each of them have different audiences, and they kind of each elucidate the subject in a slightly different way, and they ping off of each other.

I have the belief that we are all created to be unique. We are supposed to be different and do those things that made us who we are.

Thankfully I have a fan base that wants to see me, so I really enjoy creating music that is different.

I mean, how would anyone learn anything if they weren't curious? How would scientists make discoveries? -- We all have the right to be different, don't we?

From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.

I just imagine that every song in and of itself is great, but when you add them all up, it's too much of me maybe.

It's important to be yourself. What art does for everyone, helps you understand yourself and in a distilled way, whether it's a painting or a scene in acting or a joke. It distills something about everyday life that can be important to you.