A Quote by Chinua Achebe
If you don't like someone's story, write your own. If you don't like what somebody says, say what it is you don't like.
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I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
It's pretentious to say, but my art is like a little Zen story, a story with a question mark at the end. People can take from it what they need. If somebody says, "Your art is very funny," I say, "You are totally right." If somebody says, "Your art is very sad," I say, "You are totally right." In Japan they say, "Your art is very Japanese, you even look Japanese.Your great-grandfather was most surely a Japanese man." And I say, "You are totally right."
If you don't like someone's story, write your own.
I made work specifically for them not to like. If you made paintings of flowers and someone says they hate it, it's like, "What do you mean? It's a flower!" But if you make a painting of your name and somebody says they hate it, it's like, "Well, why would you like a painting of my name anyway?"
The best advice is not to write what you know, it's to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best - write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career.
Whenever you’re down on your luck, and when things aren’t going the way you like, remember that you are the author of your own story. You can write it any way you like, with anyone you choose. And it can be a beautiful story or a sad and tragic one. You get to pick.
I was interested in the ways we can write biography. When you're first starting to write about your own life it feels so shapeless because you don't know how to make your own story cohesive. How do I pluck a story out of the entirety of what it means to be alive. It occurred to me recently that when you're telling a story about your own life, rather than taking a chunk, you're kinda like lifting a thread from a loom.
Anytime somebody shares a personal story with me during autograph signings and someone comes up to me and shakes my hand and says thank you and I'm just like, wow. The fact that I can have an influence over somebody; it is heartwarming, it is the goal.
Everything has changed, but the process of telling a story has not changed. It's like cavemen sitting around the fire; somebody's going to tell the story. Somebody is drawing on the wall. You're communicating. You're trying to learn and teach at the same time. You're your own student and you're your own teacher, but the process is of the communicating.
I know my own limitations. And if somebody says, "I need songs for a cartoon garage band - they look like this and they should sound like this," it gives you a direction. I like having that kind of assignment.
When I'm watching somebody act, it's a behavior editorial function - I look at someone act, and I might say, 'I don't believe him when he says that.' I don't know why I don't believe him, probably because the people that I've met, they don't act like that when they say stuff like that and mean it.
I think it's unhealthy to listen to what people say. My dad used to always say, "Don't believe in your own hype!" I was confused at the time: "Dad, there is no hype on me." But now I understand what he was saying. If someone says, "I think you're amazing" and someone says, "I think you're awful," I would like to have the same reaction to both, to be confident and calm enough to be able to take both of those and not be affected by either.
I wouldn't be able to write a song like 'Someone Like You' and get someone else to sing it because it's so personal. It's like giving away your heart.
I wouldn’t be able to write a song like “Someone Like You” and get someone else to sing it because it’s so personal. It’s like giving away your heart.
It's either you finna create your own wave, you finna sound like me or you finna sound like G Herbo, you finna sound like Chance The Rapper, you finna sound like Juice Wrld. You ain't gonna get too far 'cause you sound like somebody. So, create your own lane and do your own style.
Write like you write, like you can't help but write, and your voice will become yours and yours alone. It'll take time but it'll happen as long as you let it. Own your voice, for your voice is your own. Once you know where your voice lives, you no longer have to worry so much about being derivative.
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