Quotes About Originality

Gavin DeGraw - his first record is the reason that I wanted to start writing music. The way that he says something that everybody says on a regular basis but he says it differently. It makes you kind of perk up and listen.

I feel like a lot of bands have done amazing covers, but whenever we start working on it, whenever we try it in rehearsal, it never feels right for me to do the song.

We didn't rehearse or play the songs to death before we recorded them, and that let us catch a freshness and energy level we've never really felt while making records.

I don't necessarily think the way people do, but that's not my problem. My problem is not to reinforce or destroy any ideas anyone might have about me, how I do what I do, what my intentions are, the way that I do it. My only job, as far as I can see, is to do the music that I want to do.

You got to be able to reinvent yourself and come up with new ideas because everybody is going to try to copy, which is what you want. You want people to start saying what you say.

I love 'Jack' as one of my creations and would never want to change it from what it was supposed to be. There was no reason to reinvent.

An actor has to continuously reinvent himself. So my plea to all directors and scriptwriters is please look at me out of the box.

I think there are some people who have this thing where, from the very beginning, some part of them rejects convention.

Really rejoice in being yourself. Have your own drumbeat.

I don't feel I'm trying to make art. I'm trying to make interesting things. People can relate to that.

If you try to create something that everybody can relate to, you're gonna make something that nobody can relate to.

It's not my concern to make a commercial pop record. I want to make a record of music that I would listen to, that is lyrically rich and has songs that people can relate to - more along the Jakob Dylan route: people who create for the art of it and not necessarily the monetary rewards of it.

It's always exciting to create a character that people can relate to, where people are like, 'Oh, I know this dude,' but maybe you've never actually seen this type of character on TV.

I believe that all forms of creativity are related.

Working with Mellencamp, I made new fans, people that may have never heard of me. They may have heard I was related to the Carter Family or Johnny Cash somehow, but what they got was pure Carlene.

Most filmmakers' entire body of knowledge is of other movies. When they describe things, they describe them in relation to other movies. That's why we have so many cyclical movies that look like other movies. But I'm not cynical. I even go to some of those movies.

Everything is creative. It's all relative to me. No matter what, you've gotta use your imagination, use your senses.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

The thing about covers that's relatively important to remember is that it doesn't matter how good an artist you are: if you don't have good ideas, the covers don't stand out.

To me, relaxing doesn't mean that we play ding-dong songs and look at a wall of bamboo. It's just completely unoriginal.

I've always said that I would only ever release something that I would want to listen to as a fan.

I'm not going to release something just because they think it's the next hit. It's not what everyone wants to hear, but that's the way it is.

If two-three films of mine release at the same time and if all of them feel like they are from the same lyricist then something is not quite right. The language of all has to be different if they are different stories.

Most of Hindi films I made are remakes of my own films.