Creative Self-Expression Quotes

The social system is taking on a form in which finding out what you want to do is less and less of an option because your life is too structured, organised, controlled and disciplined.

Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.

Even though Prince wasn't rapping and it was a whole different era, it shows how artists expressed themselves without saying too much, and that was the real beauty of the art.

I was very introverted growing up and I had small circle of friends. Any opportunity I got to rap or articulate things through rhyme or hip hop was great for me.

I've been lucky to have things come to me that creatively fulfill me, and those are usually the independent films just because you have a little bit more freedom.

I've been doing four-track songs by myself since I was like a teenager, where I'd sing in a way that I ... I just didn't think other people would like it, so I didn't play it for them but eventually I got over that, which I'm happy that I did, because it's kind of a drag to be playing a kind of music that you don't really like as much as another kind.

You think, 'You hired me because I'm a creative artist with a vision. Don't try and knock it out of me.'

I don't consider myself a sociologist, I consider myself a filmmaker, among other things. Maybe an asshole but a filmmaker.

It's good to please the network, but you really just have to tell the stories you want to tell, and if you try to please other people, it ends up starting to water stuff down. Those decisions we have to make are hard, but we usually just err on the side of 'What would we want to see?'

I know now it's a hashtag and people have various feelings about it, but really if you look at all black art, even in hip-hop, it's all about that I exist and these are my feelings and this is what I feel about the world. It's always been an undercurrent.

I love fashion. What I love is the ability to express yourself, to be able to make a product and shoot an ad campaign that tosses you out into the world and lets you have a voice in contemporary culture, iconography. I felt a little bit neutered not having that voice.

I don't fight creativity. I don't fight against not being creative. If I'm not being creative, I'm not forcing it.

The important thing about doing art and writing is that we are using our voices and using them really, really loudly. And to any girls or young women who want to write comics, I tell them, "You have to use your voice. You have to take up space." We have to fight to be heard. No one else is going to fight for us.

You don't have to make something in order to retain your identity as an artist or a writer or a creative person. A lot of people think they have to be producing in order to maintain that identity.

The very best parts of me go into my writing, it is the best version of myself, and I don't think it's hubristic to believe that that's worth something, worth someone else's time. It's the most I have to offer the world.

I love Instagram! I like LaLa Anthony and Rihanna's photos. They always have great photos.

Our Nation has a diverse and extremely rich cultural heritage. It is a source of pride and strength to millions of Americans who look to the arts for inspiration, communication and the opportunity for creative self-expression.

That painter who has no doubts will achieve little.

What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

I just want to create amazing music that speaks and defines who I am. I want it to be based on my life and/or what I am going through at that specific time.

In order to understand what they need to understand, in order to write what they write, they have to be free. And yet, they aren't ever free. They are not free because they are not free of the constrictions their art puts on them.

If you want break it down, rock and roll is about saying what you can't say in normal life to girls, so you have to say it in songs.

I am selfish, but that's an attribute that all artists possess.

Fashion is neither moral or immoral, but it is for rebuilding the morale.

My singing - it's who I am, it's all of me and it's my soul. The self expression of using your vocal equipment is not only physical and spiritual, but it's something you can't explain. It's your heart and soul together. Yes, I enjoy acting, but I portray other people. But when I sing, it's just me on that stage, communicating how I feel, how I think and what I believe.