Quotes About Originality

But then she says, "What if we use our cookie cutter to make heart-shaped pancakes instead? And put in red food coloring?" I beam at her. "Attagirl!" So maybe she's got a little bit of me in her after all. Kitty continues. "We could put red food coloring in the syrup, too, to make it look like blood. A bloody heart!

Don't look," he says. "I'm inventing this. No one will ever know what I have done except me.

To be new or original, after all, is proof that we are alive and have agency, that we are not enmeshed in an inexorable chain of cause and effect.

I don't need to hang out in a posse and try to act cool.

Discovery is the ability to see what everybody else has seen and to think what nobody else has thought.

The reason the art world doesn't respond to Kinkade is because none - not one - of his ideas about subject-matter, surface, color, composition, touch, scale, form, or skill is remotely original. They're all cliche and already told.

Many art-worlders have an if-you-say-so approach to art: Everyone is so scared of missing out on the next hot artist that it's never clear whether people are liking work because they like it or because other people do. Everyone is keeping up with the Joneses, and there are more Joneses than ever.

Everyone goes to the same exhibitions and the same parties, stays in the same handful of hotels, eats at the same no-star restaurants, and has almost the same opinions. I adore the art world, but this is copycat behavior in a sphere that prides itself on independent thinking.

The whole object of comedy is to be yourself and the closer you get to that, the funnier you will be.

Why fit in when you're born to stand out?

Creativity is the opposite of TV.

For an idea that does not at first seem insane, there is no hope.

Evie had swallowed that like it belonged to her and went right back to whatever she was working on. Then, later that day, I was walking behind her as she told a fifth grader in outdated bell-bottoms that he wore them with "a flair and a flourish" all his own. I liked that a whole lot about Evie, how she passed on her treasures.

Conformity is the ruin of the mind.

Skipping: the ultimate display of nonconformity.

Young women should pave their own path. I find it quite confining to live up to anybody else's expectations of who you should be.

As Howard Aiken said, "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

We are all the same in that we all want to be different.

Just me, rocking the awk.

Before you try to keep up wiht the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.

What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?

What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.

A writer] should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, they will succeed.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.