Quotes About Originality

Creativity is energy being put to work in a constructive fashion.

It seems to be a characteristic of all great work that it creators wear a cloak of imprecision.

It's the ultimate identity theft when you start messing with somebody's work. Thinking that you could edit the work, or mix it differently, or re-EQ it, or make claims about it that aren't true.

There is probably some long-standing "rule" among writers, journalists, and other word-mongers that says: "When you start stealing from your own work you're in bad trouble." And it may be true.

Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.

Your best work always seems to have been done by someone else.

I never work with one inspiration in mind. I like to take things from everywhere and piece it together. It's never a theme or a trick.

In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

Perpetual modernism is the measure of merit in every work of art.

People who copy what exists copy a point-in-time artifact, and if you are managing the process correctly you are already hard at work on the next thing.

If you are wiling to do something that might not work, you are closer to being an artist.

The admiration of another writer's work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.

My theory is, independent movies only work if you're willing to push the material and do something different.

The work that I wanted to create wasn't being done then. I was too much concerned about fellow students, professors, institutional style [in Yale].

Success is creating something original and lasting-whether it is a company, a work of art, an idea or analysis that influence others, or a happy and productive family.

I won't work on anyone's else's script. I won't write for anyone else. I write my own stuff and make that when the time is right.

It's challenging and interesting for me to work on projects that are unique and unconventional. I'm so bored with seeing the same recycled material.

The fact is that people are attracted to new work and by new work.

Some people really live and work within the same doctrine, the same diagram with the same logic.

I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see.

What can make your work interesting is as much who you are, as how you draw.

He whose first emotion, on the view of an excellent work, is to undervalue or depreciate it, will never have one of his own to show.