Quotes About Originality

My first song was a hardcore knock-off of 'Tangled Up in Blue.' It was based on a story maybe I had heard before. I was 13. The woman died in the end - she was sleeping on the railroad tracks. Pretty edgy, ya know.

People are going to copy your product if you build great stuff. Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn't make it Google.

Yeah, it's nice to look up to people, but the more you try to be somebody else, the less you are of yourself.

I think anyone who has, you know, is in any sort of artistic pursuit, kind of goes up and down with the way they feel about their work. And I, for the most part, am pretty happy person. But, yeah. I go through definite periods of time where I'm not funny. I'm not good. I'm - I don't feel original.

I don't think anyone can do what I already do. I just do it and it's unique, yeah.

Listen to Your Heart' was a blank slate. Yeah, there was this outside idea of 'Bachelor in Paradise' meets 'A Star Is Born,' but what does that mean? You have to actually define that, make it happen.

Well, yeah, sometimes I get a little too creative.

Oh yeah - for sure - hardly a week doesn't go by when I don't hear something wonderful that someone has made in some low-budget situation, primarily with a view to selling a few hundred copies at their concerts.

Yeah, but if you're not doing what everyone else is doing then you're going to be misunderstood. People are going to wonder why you're trying to be different; it's just a natural instinct.

I'd be more likely to go for somebody who is like me. Well, I like creative people, so whatever that means... Yeah, authentic and creative.

Designers don't put out the same sweater every year. They just keep creating.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Elves, Eskimos and aliens are the type of girls I am attracted to. I've been going out with my current girlfriend for a year. She looks like a cross between an elf, an Eskimo and an alien, with a bowl haircut and little thin legs.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

It took me years to realize that 'normal' is actually super boring and that being myself was harder but infinitely more rewarding.

When you snatch little pieces of other people's lives and try to palm them off as your own, that's more disgusting than anything. Robin Williams is a huge thief. Denis Leary is a huge thief. His whole stand-up career is based on Bill Hicks, a brilliant guy who died years ago.

I became a fashion designer to make clothes for the people, not to be a top couturier in the French tradition.

When you create something new, you're breaking tradition - which is an act of defiance.

Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a creation, but it can no longer be creative itself.

In my opinion, there's nothing new in the theatre, ever. Theatre-makers are thieves, in the honourable tradition of charlatans. They fake it very, very well indeed for the entertainment of everybody else.

I know some people like to follow the tradition, and that's who they are. That's not me.

When I set out to write crime fiction, I didn't think to myself, 'I'm going to model myself on Agatha Christie' or 'I am going to be a crime writer in the Christie tradition'.

If you're always thinking about someone else's work, about the tradition you're working in, how can you possibly make anything good?

I do not come out of a literary tradition.