William McDonough Quotes

There was a lot of pressure to find a genre and stick to it. People would tell me all the time, 'You can't be all things to everyone.' I would say, 'I'm not trying to be! I'm being what I want to be for myself.'

In London, I did feel a pressure to be more avant-garde than I wanted.

I refused to conform to an image that a lot of people thought a president's brother should adopt.

Everyone now, they look back and they're like, "What happened to your sweet image that you used to be?" And I'm like, then when you came out you thought I was too provocative. It's like you can never win. No matter what you do, at the end of the day you can't please everybody, you know. I'm not here to please.

Being beautiful can be a curse, especially if you want to be an artist and create.

The hardest thing about being in this business is just being able to be yourself. People act like there's this one set of rules to follow to be a pop star and I think, 'Well, you say I'm a pop star, so maybe that's not true.'

The whole Hollywood thing where people want to put me into this 'quirky-fashionista, daughter of' category makes me mad because it's promoting something that I don't believe in, and it's not who I am.

I was told when I was little I couldn't have an opinion because you want everyone to buy your record and like you.

What's the point if you make something that's not you, and you're successful? You have to perform it the rest of your life.

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

I was very pushed to look a certain way and act a certain way, and it wasn't me, but I played by their rules to get my foot in the door.

I wouldn't call my work Modernist. I would rust if I try to think about labels. I'd feel like the Tin Man in 'The Wizard of Oz.'

Right before I left New York, I had my manager tell me, 'You need to get a girl on your arm, or people will start talking.'

People expect me to be dark and gloomy, then write that I'm a jolly chap, and after all, that is what I am. I think it's a case of an absolute romantic naivety that there should be a parallel between the work and the artist.

I just turned 40, and I look at so many performers and so many people who are actually always on time and always have an album out. They don't have actual lives, in my opinion. I feel like I'm so much more than being famous and meeting a musical quota. And I don't know, just the weight of the scrutiny and attention is too weird for me.

I don't really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

I think being famous is more of a hindrance, a constraint, than just letting yourself be free.

Artists are definitely, like, under a sort of microscope of scrutiny more than others.

I want people to understand me as a person with views, not just performing songs.

I don't feel that as an artist my job is to offer PR propaganda, whether for the good or for the bad.

In school, I learned about artists and how they were free to express themselves. I was allergic to conformity, and the lifestyle attracted me. I wanted to express myself in a way that slammed people up against the wall.

Once you achieve a certain level of success or fame, it becomes really difficult to go against type.

I'm actually living my life with the material I choose to work with.

I think most of us are raised with preconceived notions of the choices we're supposed to make. We waste so much time making decisions based on someone else's idea of our happiness - what will make you a good citizen or a good wife or daughter or actress. Nobody says, 'Just be happy - go be a cobbler or go live with goats.'

It's just someone has labelled us as having a different label to do what you do. I find that labels are the worst thing in the world for artistic expression.