Probably the No. 1 most important thing in my music is not to sound like anyone else. It is hard in this day and age.
When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'
I never really think too much about my voice.
Don't write what you think people want to read. Find your voice and write about what's in your heart.
Our voices carry so much more weight than Joe Schmo from down the street.
When I started my first blog years ago, I just wanted to share my perspective. For a long time, models had been these mute pretty faces - and I wanted to have a voice.
I don't wanna be like everybody else, I don't wanna rap like everybody else.
I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.
I've always been the audience that I wanted to reach, so I write for myself.
'Crush' is probably the most honest project I've ever written. It's my voice.
As a teenager, I read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft, so I wrote like H.P. Lovecraft. And in my 20s, I read a lot of Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chandler, so I wrote like those guys. But, little by little, you develop your own style.
At the end of the day, my life isn't about other people's work. I've got to stop giving stuff away. I've got my own stories to tell, and a great need to tell them. I've got these images, these thoughts in my head, and I need to find a way to cope with them.
I am a unique kind of personage and voice! No one else is like me!
Various political parties, even if they're in direct opposition with one another, still say they are the spokesperson for the people. The writer must speak his own words and not get mixed up with politics.
I never claimed to be a generic artist, period. I never wanted to be a generic artist.
It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.
I think you can't help but write in your own voice.
You know how they say, "Find your voice"? That's your voice, in your pajamas. And it doesn't mean that you're going to publish it or print it or people are going to see you in your pajamas. It just means you are going to construct the foundation in your pajamas, in that voice.
I think that if a writer doesn't use her voice, be it in her writing or online or in real life, then what is the point of having one?
We find our voice, we lose our voice, we retrieve it, honor it, and hopefully, learn how to share it with others and stand in the center of our power. Translation is a theme. Fear and courage are a theme.
I made the tenor sax - there's nobody plays like me and I don't play like anybody else.
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it!
Drawing was a constant in how I expressed myself.
Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.
