Quotes About Originality

Plus, if you're a copycat, you can never keep up. You're always in a passive position. You never lead; you always follow. You give birth to something that's already behind the times—just a knockoff, an inferior version of the original. That's no way to live.

It's a beautiful way to put it: Leave the poetry in what you make. When something becomes too polished, it loses its soul. It seems robotic.

Les presento al nuevo expósito, Tiger Prawns. Tiger te presento a las hermanas Karamázov. Deirdre y Deirdre. -¿Por qué se llaman igual? -Tenían un padre con muy poca imaginación.

Life, I decided, would be good, and more than that, unusual .

Any gloss on authors, their character traits or biographies, hides the fact that only bad writing has an author, good writing does not.

if you approach this society with the nuances of moral, aesthetic, or critical judgment , you will miss its originality, which comes from its defying judgment ...

Memory is a dangerous function. It retrospectively gives meaning to that which did not have any. It retrospectively cancels out the internal illusoriness of events, which was their originality. But if events retained their original, enigmatic form, their ambiguous, terrifying form, there would doubtless no longer be any history.

The idea that an idea can be stolen from you is meaningless. If it can be stolen from you that is because it is unimportant. If it can be stolen from you, the fact is that it is not yours.

Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.

Imitate, and what is personal will eventually come despite yourself.

Classifiable things reek of death. You must strike out in other spheres . . . quit the ranks. That's the sign of masterpieces and heroes. An original, that's the person to astonish and to rule.

Listen very carefully to the first criticisms of your work. Note just what it is about your work that the reviewers don't like; it may be the only thing in your work that is original and worthwhile.

Listen carefully to first criticisms of your work. Note just what it is about your work that the critics don't like—then cultivate it. That's the part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.

Good writers borrow, great writers steal. —T. S. Eliot (but possibly stolen from Oscar Wilde)

People don't realize you can't copyright a plot," Alessandro said finally. "You can't even copyright a title, and that would be a lot easier to make an argument about.

a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution

Ich najlepsze historie opowiadajÄ… o nierozwa?nych, o oryginaÅ'ach, którzy zostali ukarani. No bo tak: tak wÅ'aÅ›nie jest i nikt nie po wie, ?e jest inaczej.

The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

Everything in their whole bloody world is a cliché. Everything is born out of a cliché, rests on a cliché, survives by a cliché. And they believe in the clichés - there's no hope.

You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them.

You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear?

I can't catch her by copying her, I can't draw her with a borrowed stencil. She is all the things a lover should be and quite a few a lover should not. Pin her down? She's not a butterfly. I'm not a wrestler. She's not a target. I'm not a gun. Tell you what she is? She's not Lot no. 27 and I'm not one to brag.

I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I.

It's the clichés that cause the trouble.