Quotes About Originality

The class's favorite book was Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading. In this novel, Nabokov differentiates Cincinnatus C., his imaginative and lonely hero, from those around him through his originality in a society where uniformity is not only the norm but also the law.

Yeah, Erik. You're about as sensitive as a toilet seat, Horatio said. Angie giggled. That's not original. I got it from Holden Caulfield. Who's he? Angie asked. A character in a book. [i]The Catcher In The Rye[/i]. (pg. 69)

If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

A story is like a painting, Sóli. It doesn't have to look like what you see out the window.

One thing I learned from Mr. Armstrong while striving heartily to remain uneducated: a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it. It's why guys like Chartrain wear their clothes too big and their teeth edged with gold, why Mr. Dick puts words on kites and sends them to the sun. It's why I draw what I draw.

because it intends to lead readers astray. But in another sense plagiarism can be seen as the flip side of forgery. Forgers write their own words and claim they are the words of another; plagiarists take the words of another and claim they are their own.

but by a forger

Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them. We are not here to do what has already been done.

original art is self-regulated; and no original art can be regulated from without. It carries its own counterpoise and does not receive it from elsewhere—lives on its own blood.

I think different. And I can think different if I want to.

Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new. Give us more to see...

Since childhood I'd been suspected of imagination

My favorite American philosopher is Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once observed, "If you write a better book, or preach a better sermon, or build a better mousetrap than your neighbor, the world will make a beaten path to your door.

Albert Einstein said there comes a time in life when you must stop reading other people's books and start writing your own.

Most people are reluctant to see themselves as being creative because they associate creativity with complexity. But creativity is simplicity.

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.

I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a by-product. The course was more plodding than heroic: I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps.

because here I was having a life, even though it was a pastiche of elements of the life of someone else.

that born leaders don't fit the corporate mold, that I was destined for bigger things than hitching my wagon to someone else's star.

Have fun, think small, don't fear the obvious.

That we think with neither fear nor favor, with neither blind optimism nor sour skepticism. That we think like—ahem—a Freak.

It turns out that good ideas have certain signature patterns in the networks that make them. The creating brain behaves differently from the brain that is performing a repetitive task.

Guilford also realized that divergent thinking wasn't entirely free wheeling: It had four core characteristics. Fluency, the ability to produce a great number of ideas in a short time-frame; flexibility, the ability to approach a problem from multiple angles; originality, the ability to produce novel ideas; elaboration, the ability to organize those ideas and execute on them.

Avoid clichés like the plague—it's a no-brainer.