You have to utilize who you are in your work. Nobody else can do that: nobody else can pull from your background, from your parents, your upbringing, your whole life experience.

Carson’s remark frames creative work—especially design—as inseparable from the maker’s lived experience. Rather than treating style as a set of external rules to master, he argues for authorship: the most distinctive contribution comes from personal history that cannot be replicated by training or imitation. The quote also implies an ethical stance against generic solutions and trend-following; originality is not a decorative choice but the natural outcome of honestly drawing on one’s background, influences, and constraints. In this view, “voice” is less something invented than something uncovered and applied, turning biography into a unique creative resource.