Quotes About Originality

I believe, when it comes to storytelling ... that mistakes are often the beginning of the best ideas. After all, a mistake wasn't planned. It can't be a cliché. All you have to do is think of a reason why the mistake isn't a mistake at all, and you might have something fresh and wonderful, something to stimulate a story you never thought of quite that way before.

Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card

I never really had anybody who followed me. Never wanted them. That's the thing, I guess, that set me apart from the rest of the Jeesh—I was the only one who didn't wish I were Ender.

Yet even the most hackneyed, shopworn science fiction or fantasy tale will feel startling and fresh to a naive reader who doesn't know the milieu is just like the one used in a thousand other stories.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, Innocently, as though there had never been anybody.

A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

Art only begins where Imitation ends.

It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.

Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.

If we're always guided by other people's thoughts, what's the point in having our own?

Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.

It is tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man,' says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Genius is lonely.

I ain't got an original thought in my head. If it ain't got the scent of divinity to it, I ain't interested in it

It may even be that everybody starts out fairly unique only most people get over it. Come

Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.