If I'm inspired to make a certain kind of song, I'm going to make that kind of song, no matter if it's what they know me as or think I am.
Billie EilishRead
I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn't. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it's about you and what you want to be. You're not being treated like a clothes hanger.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the idea that personal expression and artistry are more fulfilling than conforming to traditional beauty standards.
Billie Eilish reflects on her childhood aspiration to be a model, acknowledging societal standards of beauty that she felt unable to meet due to her height and body type. However, she emphasizes that being an artist allows for deeper personal expression and individuality, as opposed to merely being an object for display, as models often are. This highlights the value of creativity and authenticity over conventional roles.
Themes
ArtIndividualityCreativitySelf-ExpressionPhotography
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about pursuing one's passions, one might quote Eilish to emphasize the importance of self-expression over societal expectations.
More from Billie Eilish
All quotes βI wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, 'What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?' I get what you're saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.
Billie EilishRead
I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.
Billie EilishRead
'Bellyache' is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren't real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don't know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.
Billie EilishRead
I don't want people at my shows to come out and say, 'I just saw a cool show.' I want them to say, 'I had fun at the show.' I want it to be a collaborative thing and be part of the audience and have them be part of me. I try to interact with everyone there and have them be equal to me because they are.
Billie EilishRead
Being an artist doesn't just mean you have a song. That doesn't make you an artist. The word 'artist' means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists - Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West - are doing the most.
Billie EilishRead
Similar quotes
Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelRead
That the best piece of art a person is capable of making is the one that only they could create.
Stephen KaramRead
The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.
Samuel JohnsonRead
Someone said to me, early on in film school... if you can photograph the human face you can photograph anything, because that is the most difficult and most interesting thing to photograph.
Roger DeakinsRead
With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.
Jesmyn WardRead
I've read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, 'Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.' I don't want to be part of that.
Matthew McconaugheyRead