Quotes About Originality

Music is the only thing I've ever known that doesn't have any rules at all.

Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe.

When I was coming up, we weren't trying to get a hit or get paid, we were just trying to do our thing. The only thing we were really trying to do was to be recognized for our originality.

The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.

The easiest thing is to create something no one has ever seen before. There's a reason no one's ever seen it - because someone tried it, and it didn't work in the real world.

A lot of the things I did - it's not going to sound anything but egotistical - if I'm lucky and I did the right thing, they will be at Zara way before I can get them in the store, and I don't like that.

I'm not opposed to doing a fashion line, but I want to make sure it's the right thing and make sure its something people actually want instead of putting out a bunch of stuff that's already been done.

I think 'Family Guy' and 'American Dad' have definitely staked out their own style and territory, and now the accusations are coming that 'The Simpsons' is taking jokes from 'Family Guy.' And I can tell you, that ain't the case.

'The Simpsons' is a tough act to follow, so I thought it was best not to do what they do.

The band that changed my life was The Who. It's hard to pick just one album, but if I had to pick the one that really showed me how things could be done, it's 'The Who Sell Out.' They really went to town on that, doing something that no one had ever done before.

There's such a thing as theater discipline. One player doesn't appropriate another's inventions.

Your mind just goes to the craziest idea to lure people into the theater, and then you write your script around those elements.

If you want people to come to theaters, you better do something different.

I loathe bad theater and most theatre is very bad because it's repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously, it is sometimes praised for those things.

Theatre can't be done again and again and again and again - it's organic.

We all like all of that, from 'Rubber Soul' to 'The White Album' and all of that, but even before, we were into that theatrical element of things. We didn't want to do a 'Sgt. Pepper's' thing.

All art is theft.

Our approach is not to look at the successes of other people and try to repeat those successes. We don't look at the success of 'Grand Theft Auto 3' and think that maybe if we create games for older audiences will see a similar success.

There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that's important.

The next Bill Gates will not start an operating system. The next Larry Page won't start a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg won't start a social network company. If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them.

Do not borrow the productions of other men's brains and pens and recite them as a lesson; but make the most of the talents, the brain power, that God has given you.

If there's one theme in all my work, it's about authenticity and self-expression. It's the idea that some things are, in some real sense, really you - or express what you and others aren't.

I hate being bored when I read a story. Even a well-trod theme can be made fresh by a different perspective or fresh writing.

I want to make theme-setting music, music that sets a theme without being cliche.