Quotes About Style

When a new writer defends his "style," the teacher smiles (or cringes) because real style isn't an artifice. Real style - voice - arrives on its own, as an extension of a writer's character. When style is done self-consciously and purposefully it becomes affectation, and as transparent as any affectation - an English accent on an old college chum from New Jersey, for example.

My personal style is a continued evolution. I can see I've had a different style for every different age in the period of my life. It's difficult for me to say what is my style because I change all the time. I change every eight months, it's so weird.

In Paris style is everything. That is traditionally understood. Every street, every structure, every shopgirl has style. The style of Parisian architecture has been proved and refined by at least three centuries of academic dictates and highly developed taste. There are few violations of this taste, and there is exemplary architectural consistency. Paris has defined the aesthetics of a sophisticated urban culture.

Fashion is temporary; fashion is a race. What it's doing is giving you something that you say, "This is the outer wrapping of me." Style is something else. It's not quantifiable. Fashion is about selling. Fashion is about what's in. Style is independent of that; style is individual.

I was very influenced by comics. The drawing style, definitely, I was interested in. My style of drawing is largely a comic style, but it's also much more obvious than comics.

If you can change style, why stick to one style? Style is a vanity because it gives you product identification.

As a songwriter, you tend to develop your own style, your own technique, based around what it is you're trying to write and perform, in terms of your own music. So a way of evolving a guitar style as a songwriter is much easier, I think, than developing a true style of your own just from listening to music or playing other people's music.

To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see what he describes-countrysides and figures, movements and gestures-how could he have a style, that is originality?

Styles tend to not only separate men - because they have their own doctrines and then the doctrine became the gospel truth that you cannot change. But if you do not have a style, if you just say: Well, here I am as a human being, how can I express myself totally and completely? Now, that way you won't create a style, because style is a crystallization . That way, it's a process of continuing growth.

I've changed my style constantly, so I'm not sure I have one defined style, except perhaps style of subject matter.

Oddly enough, I suppose, I don't give much thought to my style, and I don't attempt to be consistent - except within a story. You ask if I struggled to find my style. It seems to me that style - in other words, a way of thinking and doing things - is innate. You can try to will it to be different, but it's like a signature - you can't change its fundamental nature.

Gandhi and Mandela and Churchill and JFK and Reagan and Thatcher and Sarkozy and Franklin and Washington set the tone to an incredible degree-their "personal style" was their "brand." ("It" starts with personal style of the tip-top leadership team. Sorry to be politically insensitive, but who would give a hoot about Tibet if it weren't for the look and style of the Dalai Lama?) Boss at any level: You're either on the "it" boat-or not.

A really good style comes only when a man has become as good as he can be. Style is character. A good style cannot come from a bad undisciplined character.

When you say documentary, you have to have a sophisticated ear to receive that word. It should be documentary style, because documentary is police photography of a scene and a murder ... that's a real document. You see, art is really useless, and a document has use. And therefore, art is never a document, but it can adopt that style. I do it. I'm called a documentary photographer. But that presupposes a quite subtle knowledge of this distinction.

What I think of as style - and I've gotten to this over years of really thinking about it - is that style is the unconscious choices I make.

Style, I've got no style.

I love French style from the Thirties and Forties. French movie stars like Jean Gabin and Yves Montand had so much natural, effortless style.

Writing style is something is a consequence of who you are. I think that I had a certain propensity for a style that I recognize in my early work, but that doesn't mean I didn't have to learn certain basics and the longer you write the better you get. The rhythms come from you. If the rhythm seem to echo the music, then that's delightful if people see that, but it's certainly not something that's intentional on my part. I'm trying to be as clear and precise as I can be and at the same time, I'm trying to be eloquent and witty and entertaining. I mean, writing should be a pleasure.

After all, it is style alone by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style.

Ghost tells me every few years, Yo, you showed me this style ... I'm like, man, we the same style. At the end of the day, he's one of my favorite rappers, I'm one of his favorite rappers, and we just do it.

In terms of style I typically veer toward a certain masculinity. My style inspirations range from images of my father in his 1970s suits, to Tilda Swinton, to Hugh Hefner, to Sharon Stone and her ferocious sexuality, to handsome men I see on the streets of New York.

So yeah, it's nothing that I'm doing on purpose, I just think that the more records, the more songs that I write, the more records that I make, you're obviously going to fall into a specific style and thank God it's a style that people are into.

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made. Almost no new classics resemble other previous classics. At first people see only the awkwardness. Then they are not so perceptible. When they show so very awkwardly people think these awkwardnesses are the style and many copy them. This is regrettable.

Style is very personal. It has nothing to do with fashion. Fashion is over quickly. Style is forever.

The Jam were a good band, however I feel that the Style Council were better. A lot of people I know will disagree with me. Some things we did with The Style Council were misinterpreted or over their heads.

I personally do not believe in the word style. Why? Because, unless there are human beings with three arms and four legs, unless we have another group of beings on earth that are structurally different from us, there can be no different style of fighting. Why is that? Because we have two hands and two legs. ... because of styles, people are separated. They are not united together because styles become law.

As a young kid I was in love with breakdancing. I practiced the uprock style, which is a battle style of dance that looks like fighting. It comes from the gangs in New York in the 1960s and '70s. It's beautiful, almost like a martial art, and it can be funny, too, because you make fun of each other.

My thing from the beginning is to have it be useful, and be able to help others. It's about being efficient and getting there as fast as you can. If people want to do it more artistically or in a freestyle way, I have absolutely no problem with it — that's the way it's going to evolve. It's not my style, but if it's other people's [style], that's perfect.

I think my brand of country music is that's been influenced by not just the rough-stock rodeo side or Ted Nugent's "let's get crazy style", but also the stand-up and sing style's like George Strait and Merle Haggard, and also the wild side of Chris Ledoux

There was, I think, a feeling that the best science was that done in the simplest way. In experimental work, as in mathematics, there was "style" and a result obtained with simple equipment was more elegant than one obtained with complicated apparatus, just as a mathematical proof derived neatly was better than one involving laborious calculations. Rutherford's first disintegration experiment, and Chadwick's discovery of the neutron had a "style" that is different from that of experiments made with giant accelerators.

I think that Lethal Weapon-style dialogue is overused, it's a necessary aspect of high action films where you have to have the smart retort. You have to say "I'll be back baby" and stuff. It's not my style.

Of Dickens' style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules... No young novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens.

My style of play has always been the same. I never tried to develop a specific style. From very young I just played this way.

Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the caliber of a bullet, teething beads.

There are, occasionally, writers who are able to combine both story and style. They are, of course, the best. You get a spectacular view and you also get to look at it from the backseat of a chauffeur-driven Cadillac. In the field of fantasy, those writers able to combine story-as-narration with story-as-style are even rarer. But there are a few...the late Theodore Sturgeon, the early Ray Bradbury...and Richard Christian Matheson. A brilliant chip off the old block.

I think in L.A. everybody has a really cool flare, trendy style here. I think I kinda adapt be it I'm a little more trendy in L.A. Somewhere in New York, I could literally sit at a café and have a cappuccino and watch people walk by and it's like a fashion show to me. Compared to somewhere like Miami where I literally wear beachwear all day and I can walk around barefoot. My style is consistent. It may bend a little bit according to cities, but that's about it.

People with high blood pressure, diabetes - those are conditions brought about by life style. If you change the life style, those conditions will leave.

My vocal style is called bel canto, which is an old Italian vocal style going back hundreds of years.

I know I have a very unusual style of playing, where other more recognized and technically proficient players might look at me and wonder what the heck I'm doing. The purpose of my learning to play the way I do was more to accompany my singing. I figured out a style where I'm mentally playing the drums over a simple melody.

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.

My style advice to other girls is to be experimental but always have a 'home base' and stick with your comfort style.

The generic Canadian style of illustration is different from the generic American style.

Style for me is some one who figures out who they are. What works on them. What they feel good in and develops that. Develops their character. And the outer expression of their character is what is style.

I fell in love with Bruce Lee after I watched his movies, and I wanted to become a kung-fu practicer, and I would like to be someone like Bruce Lee. That's why I learned kung-fu, and that's why I picked the wing chun style, because it's his style. That's why I decided to be an actor, to go into show business, because of him.

I tend to write pretty much by myself. I always did that anyway. I used to write with Ron Strykert 'cause he was the only guitarist and we played well together. We lived in the same place. I would play a certain style and he would kind of dance around what I did, in a sense. I learned from him and also vice-versa. With this band, I think I bounce ideas off everybody. Perhaps on the next album they'll be more collaborative stuff, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been pretty well writing by myself.

We are a very close family, and I love them very much, but I'm definitely the odd one out. I live a completely different kind of life style. I always was different. I felt like a fish out of water; I really never knew who I was.

the search for the ultimate skyscraper goes on. ... At worst, overbuilding will make urban life unbearable. At best, we will go out in a blaze of style.

There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.