Quotes About Originality

My dad had a guitar but it was acoustic, so I smashed a mirror and glued broken glass to it to make it look more metal. It looked ridiculous!

I mean, look at Adele. She sings and she's not posh, posh, posh. But she's absolutely amazing. She's smashing it. She's global. I just think why change yourself? I'm going to stay as me.

I don't like to chase an audience. You can smell when someone is chasing an audience and it's not good.

People see me high-fivin' and smiling on the court, and they don't think that's me. But it is. I just want to go out and be myself.

Watch me on CNN/SI. Check out clips from 'Quite Frankly.' I've always been Stephen A. Smith. I've been this way since the day I was born.

Fortunately, as we all know, it's impossible for anybody but Jimmy Smith to really sound like Jimmy Smith.

I don't want to compare myself to anyone else, but there's Paul Smith, who I think does a great job. I feel like once I sort everything to the best quality, I'll be able to compete with them.

My voice makes the genre because I sound like me on all my songs - I've made my own genre: Jorja Smith.

I like my stationery to be funnier, like, 'Here's my note, and it's an elephant with a lady smoking a cigarette on top.'

Whether it is 'Pyar Ke Side Effects,' 'Mithya,' 'Khosla Ka Ghosla,' 'No smoking,' all my films have been different from regular Bollywood movies.

The Bay, they got their own sound, they don't try to be like nobody. They smooth out there.

When I was in the marching band, I used to take my snare drum and turn it over and use my drumstick and scratch on the other side. That was just being creative.

What we thought brings us a disadvantage, brings us an advantage against the American black rappers, because they look all the same, with their training outfits and sneakers, you know? But we didn't know this, it wasn't calculated.

People sniff out when you try to fake something or be something you are not.

I can apply myself to the format of 'SNL,' I can apply myself to the format of 'Conan,' but at the same time, I'm still being J. B. Smoove. I'm not changing up my style, I'm not changing up how I think, what's funny to me, my delivery, the way I carry myself.

You learn quickly at 'SNL' you get in trouble if you compare yourself to other people, where they're at, or what other people had done before you.

I'm a comedy snob, and I never want anything that I do to get old.

As for the notion that everything has already been said, maybe it has, but life is like meatloaf: there are so many different ways to present it.

I feel very, very proud that so many people have copied me.

I'm trying to have my own thing, and I don't know if it's even possible. I didn't realize so many people actually think I'm trying to be like my dad. I read comments like 'She's no Elvis.' I'm not trying to be. I never set out to be.

I'm not gonna say that I hate it, because I really respect Usher and I was influenced by him. But so many people compare me to him, and I don't think it'll ever stop. I just want to be my own artist.

Keep your mind open about what you want to do and be true to yourself. So many people are governed by what's 'in' or copy something that someone else has done.

I just don't want to live in the past. I'm really disappointed by so many people of my generation who - in order to promote their new work, they have to constantly lean on their past. I don't want to be that type of artist... I see a lot of people out here doing really marginal music.

After so many years, I don't really think writing has to be absolutely new. No. It has to be good work.