Quotes About Originality

Just because your friend does it, doesn't mean you have to. Be a leader, not a follower.

I can be a better me than anyone can; I am me. Good or bad. I am myself. I'm no carbon copy of no one else.

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize. — Diane Arbus, Revelations (Random House, 2003)

God's image has been imprinted uniquely on each of us. In God's infinite creativity there are no duplicates; you are the only you there has ever been or ever will be.

You can be nothing better than yourself; be that [...]

The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book.

I write from my imagination, not from what I've read in books or seen on TV or to make money. I wrote from an idea I was passionate about.

My beauty icons are women whose images are self-created.

I've always loved the idea of not being what people expect me to be.

Everyone else can go ahead and live in their beige movie. I prefer mine in Technicolor. They might all look at me and they might talk about me and they might think I'm weird. And you know what? I couldn't possibly disappoint them. So let's not. Instead, let's show them how it's done.

One's life is peculiar to one's own when one has invented it.

One's life is peculiarly one's own when one has invented it.

A fresh approach to a work of music (...) usually comes to those who have a fresh approach to aspects of life, to life in general.

Anybody remotely interesting is mad, in some way or another.

A peacock that rests on his feathers is just another turkey.

A peacock who rests on its feathers is just another turkey.

I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable.

If you try to follow everyone else and be like everyone else, before you know it you're gone. You're not going to find yourself again; you'll just be a version of what you might have hoped to have been.

All music is rehash. There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme'. John Lennon1

The forger was too exacting, too superficial. Only the real artist has the false beginning.

Sometimes the distinction between theft and homage is murky.

A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.

I'm kind of surprised that so many of those other books were almost exactly like mine. They even follow the form. There were some books that even copied the stamp. It shows so little imagination.

To my knowledge, I was the first guy really to do what I do. And then later on different comedians started trying doing it.