Quotes About Originality

I never indulge commonplace thoughts, said Sir Vincent... Not, at all events, in relation to the Grand Sophy.

If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation.

I didn't want my records to sound like anybody else, and when I've got my guys in the studio, I have a language with those guys because we work together every day. A lot of times, you bring in outside guys, studio players, whatever, and they're great musicians. It's just that they don't necessarily play the way I want it to be played.

Being myself has worked out pretty well for me I think.

I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.

I've tried singing like somebody else, and it never worked for me. The only thing that has ever worked for me was me being me, so either you love it or not.

We shall be forced to attempt planned and directed research employing hundreds of workers for many years, and this cannot be done without risking the loss of independence and originality. This is a serious and fundamental obstacle but it may be overcome in two ways.

I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.

When you're doing something for the first time, you don't know it's going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it's copied. I have to be honest: the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn't. I think it's theft, and it's lazy.

Don't be afraid to be awesome. Sometimes being weird and different is good. When you think you're working hard, there is always someone else working harder, so always be yourself and know your stuff.

It sounds super cliche, but staying true to yourself and what you are works.

You get a sense of how the show works and then let your personality take over.

There's no reason trying to fit in: Just be you. That was the biggest thing for me, just being me, and finding what works for me.

It's like a kitchen, acting. Put a chef in a kitchen and they will have different recipes. Whatever your recipe, what works for you won't work for another.

I strive to create new opportunities in terms of partnerships and new works being presented and things you haven't seen anywhere else. Also to help you see old things in ways you haven't seen them before.

In my own life, I share my home with works by artists like Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Jackie Windsor and so many others, whose creativity is clear and fresh and compelling; the works break through the usual, and they inspire creativity; they inspire responses and understanding.

Talent works, genius creates.

I've never been about just trying to do what works. I've been about trying to authentically express how I feel.

We all agree now - by 'we' I mean intelligent people under sixty - that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.

I would have preferred to be successful here with a piece that cost me a huge amount of money and effort... rather than sending to Bohemia some ordinary works.

If you're you, it doesn't matter if you're the most boring person in the world: someone will like you. You're not trying to be anyone else.

The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world.

Being different gives the world color.

Life is short. Don't do the same thing everyone else is doing - that's such a herd mentality. And don't do something that's two percent better than the other person. Do something that changes the world.