Quotes About Originality

I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids!

I prefer career artists that have spent time honing their craft, as opposed to, 'I won a karaoke contest on a reality show and now I have a record.' That's such a drag. The music that comes out of it is so poor.

I don't dictate, you don't dictate to Stevie Wonder, not successfully.

I've never been interested in playing the boring ingenue. I always wonder: Who's her weird friend? I like the oddballs.

Glenn Hughes is one of the most naturally talented musicians, but he's still copying Steve Wonder to this day, so I can't call him a bona fide member of Deep Purple.

Put yourself in the position of an up-and-coming artist living in early-sixteenth-century Italy. Now imagine trying to distinguish yourself from the other artists living in your town: Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, or Titian. Is it any wonder that the Italian High Renaissance lasted only 30 years?

Has it ever happened to you that you actually like a rogue more than a so-called honest citizen? Have you ever wondered why? I believe that this can only be so because a rogue is more original and more his own. He is what he is.

I once knew a chap who had a system of just hanging the baby on the clothes line to dry and he was greatly admired by his fellow citizens for having discovered a wonderful innovation on changing a diaper.

Vince Gilligan and AMC are really wonderful people to direct and produce for because they don't put the demands of any conventionalism on you.

You think there's a rule book, in a way, until you realize there's absolutely no rule book, and you can use a red carpet to express something about yourself. There are so many wonderful designers in the world, and they create such wonderful things. Why go with something uninteresting?

One of the more depressing things about reading your fiction 25 years later, or 10 years later, is you realize the only things going on are things you made go on. Strange and interesting and new and wonderful things don't happen. It's the book you wrote; that's all.

'Kamariya' is a wonderfully composed song. The concept for the video is so fresh, and it's unlike anything I have done before.

Is it not in the most absolute simplicity that real genius plies its pinions the most wonderfully?

I wonder if it is Australia's great distance from more populated land masses that allows its inhabitants to be left to their own devices, to be incredibly creative and, at times, to be wonderfully weird.

People would come up to me, saying, 'You sound a lot like the lead singer from Queen.' I started wondering, 'Who is this guy making me sound so unoriginal?'

We've gone from a world in which Starbucks set a cutting-edge standard for mass-market design to a world in which Starbucks establishes the bare minimum. If your establishment can't come up with an original look, customers expect at least some sleek wood fixtures, nicely upholstered chairs, and faux-Murano glass pendant lights.

I don't like things that can be reproduced. Wood isn't important in itself but rather in the fact that objects made in it are unique, simple, unpretentious.

I didn't want to be one of the Beach Boys or one of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band. I mean, we appreciated that music. But I didn't want to grow a beard to look like Roy Wood just because I liked him.

We don't need another Woody. Even Bob Dylan knew he couldn't be Woody Guthrie... I like Woody Guthrie fine, but I don't need the 50th generation version of it.

The only thing I really recommend, if you're starting out in stand-up is to not try to copy anybody else. You can be influenced by people. I was influenced by Steve Martin and Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, but I never tried to be someone else. I always tried to be myself. And the reason people are successful is they're unique.

Being an artist doesn't just mean you have a song. That doesn't make you an artist. The word 'artist' means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists - Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West - are doing the most.

I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.

The whole 'sell out' word to me is such a tired, tired word.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.