Quotes About Originality

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.

As a writer no one's gonna tell me how to write, I'm gonna write the way I wanna write!

The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.

I didn't want a ghost writer. I've got such a distinctive voice, people would smell a rat, I think.

The treasure of a writer is to maintain their own style.

I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could call my own.

People send me songs all the time that are literally no-brainer hits... but for me, I'm an artist because I'm a writer.

I'm a writer, not a genre.

The best thing anyone can do is be himself. Everyone was made different by God, and that's the way it should be. And if I were a writer or an announcer starting out, I don't think I'd imitate anybody. I'd try to be whatever I am.

Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

I am very willing to admit that I have some poetical abilities, and as few - if any - writers, either moral or political, are intimately acquainted with the classes of mankind among whom I have chiefly mingled, I may have seen men and manners in a different phasis from what is common, which may assist originality of thought.

I'm influenced by Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace: writers who are often not content to just stack paragraphs and have to break out of that.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.

What I always meant by that was that I do believe that a lot of directors, and writers, and sometimes producers just lose their edge because they haven't seen anybody or talked to anybody or been with anybody who isn't a kind of replica of themselves for a long period of time.

Too many new writers dress up old cliches.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

I discovered Einstein said the same thing about his celebrated theories of relativity that writers say about their work when he said he didn't have any feelings of personal possession of these ideas. Once they were out there, they came from somewhere else. And that's exactly the feeling when you write. You don't feel possessive about it.

I think it's our job as writers for Marvel Comics to continue to create those type of stories that can be mined instead of just trying to give readers exactly what they see on film.

Some writers would be kinder than others, I'm sure. Hopefully they might describe my techniques as a mixture of tried and tested formulas - if it aint broke don't fix it - and unexpected twists.

There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody.

All writers are mimics, and I'm not interested in picking up somebody else's style or voice.