Quotes About Originality

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.

talent: the innate power to discover the hidden connection between two things — images, ideas, words — that no one else has ever seen before, link them, and create for the world a third, utterly unique work.

When an idea pops into our head and we think, "No, this is too crazy," … that's the idea we want. When we think, "This notion is completely off the wall … should I even take the time to work on this?" … the answer is yes. Never doubt the soup. Never say no. The answer is always yes.

Remember, as artists we don't know diddly. We're winging it every day. For us to try to second-guess our Muse the way a hack second-guesses his audience is condescension to heaven. It's blasphemy and sacrilege. Instead let's ask ourselves like that new mother: What do I feel growing inside me? Let me bring that forth, if I can, for its own sake and not for what it can do for me or how it can advance my standing.

Conception occurs at the primal level. I'm not being facetious when I stress, throughout this book, that it is better to be primitive than to be sophisticated, and better to be stupid than to be smart.

Suspending self-judgment doesn't just mean blowing off the "You suck" voice in our heads. It also means liberating ourselves from conventional expectations—from what we think our work "ought" to be or "should" look like.

Remember, as artists we don't know diddly. We're winging it every day. For us to try to second-guess our Muse the way a hack second-guesses his audience is condescension to heaven. It's blasphemy and sacrilege.

You gotta imagine what's never been

felt alone in the world with my alien ideas.

latter accretions are not to be considered part of the original work. Tu Mu's assertion can certainly not be taken as proof. There is every reason to suppose, then, that the 13 chapters existed in the time of Ssu-ma

Weddings Out of the Box.

When people agree, often someone smiles and says – Great minds think alike.  Think about this for a minute. If that were true, then nothing new would emerge in this world.  

To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing - a hand worker in an era of mass production.

When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition.

This happens with special frequency to the writer, like Camus, who appeals directly to a generation's image of what is exemplary in a man in a given historical situation. Unless he possesses extraordinary reserves of artistic originality, his work is likely to seem suddenly denuded after his death.

Reproducing nature slavishly is not art.

Styles are merely the copying of what others have done, perhaps done better than we. God has given us our talents so as not to copy the talents of others, but rather to use our own imagination to obtain the revelation of True Beauty.

Mr Norrell was delighted. He did not believe that anyone had ever proposed such a piece of magic before and begged Sir Walter to convey his compliments to Lord Castlereagh as the possessor of a most original brain.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

We've seen some insane signs: 'Is that a loaf of bread in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?' Funny stuff along those lines. Very original. One just said, 'I will do unspeakable things.' I thought that was very interesting - and mildly terrifying!

First of all, ideas aren't the hard part. Secondly, there are no new ideas, only the author's unique execution.

Be the best that you can be, because there isn't another one of you around.

I get curious about new things. My real strength is going into a field that has not been investigated before, and finding new approaches to it.