Quotes About Originality

An artist is always out of step with the time. He has to be.

If you spend too much time being like everybody else, you decrease your chances of coming up with something different.

The only thing all successful people have in common is that they're successful, so don't waste your time copying "the successful strategies" of others.

So I try to re-invent my own eye every time I tackle a new subject. But it's hard, because everybody has style. You can't help it.

You're not going to hear me do a rap song, you're not going to hear me do a jazz song. We have to be true to our roots, do what we do, and try to do it a little better each time.

A long time ago, I stopped trying to look at projects as genre exercises.

I stood there in the doorway before you saw me and I watched you,' he said.'And I watched the other girls. And they all looked as though their faces came out of one mold. Yours didn't.

What a treasure, to meet with any thing a new heart-- all hearts, nowadays, are secondhand at best.

I'm going to be me, whether it's good or bad

You were born God's original. Try not to become someone's copy.

The burden of originality is one that most people don't want to accept. They'd rather sit in front of the TV and let that tell them what they're supposed to like, what they're supposed to buy, and what they're supposed to laugh at.

I never said to be like me, I say to be like you and make a difference.

I am saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment

In mathematics, if you are of quick mind, you can get to the frontline of cutting-edge research very quickly. In some other domains you may have to read entire thick volumes first. Moreover, if you have been for too long in a certain domain, you get conditioned to think like everybody else. When you are new, you are not compelled to the ideas of the people around you. The younger you are, the more likely you are to be truly original.

The houses are ugly, imitations of imitations.

standardized

For example, they recently had a piece on a character--I think his name was Ambrosio D'Urbervilles--whose design statement was to stuff an entire apartment from floor to ceiling with dark purple cottonballs. He called it Portrait of a Dead Camel Dancing on the Roof of a Steambath.

anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule." The

I discovered that living is the original art.

Be yourself behind the pen, not Hemingway, Joyce or Faulkner. Find your own voice. Let your own mind run through your fingers.

When writing a sentence or phrase, ask yourself if you've ever heard or read it before. If you have, it's a cliché. Get rid of it.

Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.

Without new ideas success can become stale.

It's no more normal to be a bank-manager or a bus-conductor, than to be Baudelaire or Genghis Khan,' Moreland had once remarked. 'It just happens there are more of the former types.