In England, I'm already labeled a rock photographer, which is a little insulting, because I'm not a rock photographer at all.
I'm a little hesitant to make my characters sentimental or to risk having the work labeled sentimental. It's something that I resist as a reader, and I don't resist it in life. I'm not an unmoved person by any stretch, but I think I don't want, I guess, to indulge those kinds of things sometimes in fiction. I can't tell you why exactly.
I'm an aesthetic empiricist. If you like something, it doesn't matter who made it. There really is no objective standard other than your own taste. You develop your own tastes, you find things that do or do not fit your tastes, and therefore are or are not 'good.' Whether they have been labeled as produced by the right person is another matter.
If you get labeled a winner, people come along for the ride. Might as well enjoy it and they should too.
People have labeled me homophobic. If I was homophobic, I wouldn't have friends who are gay and lesbian, so that can't be true.
I would be happy to be labeled as a writer of offbeat stories. I don't know how to do anything else.
I realised that if you get yourself labeled as the funny one, people don't look any further. I've used that as I've got older. It's controlling: I decide what part of my personality you're seeing. I don't want you to look at me, I really don't. I don't want you to comment on my clothes, my hair or the way I look.
With the first novel, I was concerned I would be pigeon-holed as an Asian-American writer, and the book would be labeled for Asian-Americans only.
One of my biggest fears with 'Coloring Book' was that it would be labeled. I hate labels. I never sought out for people to recognize it as a gospel album.
I think today women are very scared to celebrate themselves, because then they just get labeled.
