Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don't come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.

Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.

Nadie nace con estilo ni con voz. No sales de la matriz sabiendo quién eres. Al principio de nuestra vida, aprendemos imitando a nuestros héroes. Aprendemos copiando.

It is impossible for a poet to fashion the voice deliberately by contrivance and experiment; it could not be discovered or simulated through the cultivation of an eccentric diction or prosody, or by the employment of regional speech rhythms and patterns.

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.

Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.

It was an art form, and you don’t learn to be an artist. You’re either born one, or you aren’t.

. . . None of us are born as passive generic blobs waiting for the world to stamp its imprint on us. Instead we show up possessing already a highly refined and individuated soul.

Another way of thinking of it is: We're not born with unlimited choices.

We can't be anything we want to be.

We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we're stuck with it.

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

Many writers believe that voice, which is character-based, is the same as style, which I believe is more author-based. The writer almost always has her own style, but I believe that in addition to being drawn to a particular author’s style, readers are also drawn to the singularity of the fictive voice, which is somewhat variant from work to work…

You start out imitating your heroes, and the way you fuck up becomes your style.

Niemand wordt geboren met haat jegens iemand vanwege zijn huidskleur, zijn afkomst of zijn godsdienst. Als mensen het haten kunnen leren, kunnen ze ook leren liefhebben, want liefde bereikt het hart van de mens veel vanzelfsprekender dan haat.

We’re not born with pre-installed mindsets about what we’re capable of achieving — we learn these fixed and limited ways of thinking from the people in our lives and the culture we experience growing up.

I never really learned how to sing. I mean, I think I get most of my experience from just the shower, just annoying my parents to no end, singing loud, having grand encore concerts in the shower. But I've kind of been stuck with this high-pitched voice since forever, so I kind of learned how to use it to my advantage. And I can go very low, too. Not many people know that. I went low once on the show and no one believed it was me.

Everyone is born to do something in this world. WE cannot ALL be MICHAEL JORDON or a PICCASsO - BUT WE ALL HAVE A gift. Learn to identify that gift and pursue it with all your heart