Quotes About Originality

I've covered Avril Lavigne. I like good pop songs, and I don't think there should be any kind of preconceptions about where good pop songs come from.

I feel like I write songs for the future or something. Not in an arrogant way, but I feel like maybe my songs were, like, before their time or something.

Well, I like songs that have like a little bit of quirkiness to them.

I am compared to other classical musicians, but most of them perform songs from other people, and most of those composers belong to another era.

The thing about Sheeran is that he is an incredibly real artist and songwriter. He is not trying to be anybody else other than himself.

That's one of the problems in being a songwriter and living a long time. What you eventually end up doing is you start imitating yourself.

I'm a songwriter and producer, so I'm always wanting to make my own stuff, and not use anybody else's.

I think what makes me great as a songwriter is there's still an artist behind it.

We felt like, first and foremost, we were songwriters.

There are phrases that are totally cliche that we, as songwriters, owe it to ourselves to not use again.

The personality and songwriting of Holy Ghost! trumps the originality card any day.

The only way to be original in your songwriting is to write about your own experiences, and I think that's what we try to do as a band.

As far as songwriting, I'm not sure if they wrote all of their own stuff, but I love the Dixie Chicks.

I always saw songwriting as the top of the heap. No matter what else you were going to do creatively - and there were a lot of choices - writing songs was king.

I've been really trying to hone the art of songwriting in a way that doesn't follow any sort of guideline.

Not that there is anything wrong with confessional songwriting, there are plenty of people that do that I admire. I think it is great, it just isn't how I do things.

I'm just getting back into my songwriting groove. It's still pretty early. But I don't want to make 'Hero 2.' It's going to be different.

This goes for our songwriting as well as our success as a band - the minute we stopped chasing what we thought people wanted to hear and started writing things that moved us, that's when people started paying attention.

A lot of bands are influenced by other bands, and that informs their songwriting for sure. It definitely informs my songwriting, too. But it's more about not thinking about it, and if it comes out of you, it's better.

Yes, indeed, in fact I would tell you that we go out of our way to be true to the original feeling and sort of sonic and musical pallet that we painted with back then.

As soon as you think, 'Pirates are really popular right now with kids so I'm going to write a pirate movie'... that's when you're dead.

I think the most important thing about learning comedy is to start from who you are. If you begin the process by imitating what you perceive to be a comedy rhythm, you will get laughs sooner, but you will not be unique.

We make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it. If you try to analyze audiences or think there's some sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed. You're making it too complicated.

Among contemporaries, I hugely admire Alice Munro, our Chekhov, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and John Updike, American masters all. I also believe that the voice of Gordon Lish is astoundingly original and sorrowful.