Quotes About Originality

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

your job is to be honest and to try not to be too boring. However, if you must choose between being eclectic and various or being repetitious and boring, be repetitious and boring. Most good poets are, if read very long at one sitting.

Fuck Kerouac; he would write his own story.

I chose to do something everyone else was rubbish at in the hope that I would shine," he said.

My theory about writing is that one should write books you'd like to read, but no one else has written yet. So, as long as I stick with that, I'm entertaining myself, and then hopefully my readers as well. I hope to god I realize that I'm repeating myself, if I ever do. But if I don't, I'm sure my readers will let me know.

It's just, people throwing around fashionable lingo think they're so hip and imaginative. But you can't be hip and imaginative. You can be unhip and imaginative, or hip and conformist.

The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

The idea that Justin had sacrificed his life not for the glamorous refurbished version of Henry Lamb but for the original, slightly crappy version has filled his soul with rightness and substance. Henry Lamb was enough, he'd thought; he didn't need to be anybody else.

Shaw...has a woman ever asked you to write a poem for her?" "Good God, no," Gideon replied with a snicker. "Shaws don't write poetry. They pay others to write it for them and then take the credit for it.

Although she was not conventionally beautiful, she was so original that it rendered the question of beauty inconsequential.

Similarities in the vampire genre are so rampant that there's really no such thing as an original idea - only an original take on an idea that's been done before.

The intensity of the story breaking on 'Vampire' has never been easy. Every week, you're starting with a blank board and trying to make a new movie. There's no formula; there's no franchise to hang your hat on.

Being a purple van man means I have my own perspective on things.

I did not have a van, or wear Birkenstocks and tie-dyes.

I've never really heard anybody imitating anything of mine the way they do with Edward Van Halen's stuff.

Someone who copies a Van Gogh does not therefore become Van Gogh, and the same would go for Mozart or anyone else who contributed something that was original. Certainly in the way that I described visualizing numbers in abstract, meaningful shapes.

When Van Halen started out, there was no path to fame. We just played what we liked. Even today it always comes down to the simplicity of rock and roll.

More and more, I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice. In death metal, a lot of guys are Eddie Van Halen disciples, but they take his style to really expressionistic places. It's a real pleasure for me to hear people pushing their craft.

I've been playing for aeons now, but way, way back, I remember Eddie Van Halen came out ,and I loved his playing. He was amazing. But then everyone started copying his guitars with Floyds, and I didn't.

I love players like Thurston Moore. I mean, you can put notes down on a sheet of paper, and if you practice and get your chops up, you can play like an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai. But nobody can do what Thurston Moore does; he's his own guy. He talks through his instrument in a language that's all his own.

So everybody is trying to play like Eddie Van Halen. I think it's rubbish. I think Eddie's great, but everyone's trying to do what he does and it doesn't make for a lot of interesting music.

People don't want just vanilla. They want 31 flavors. I couldn't do what Rihanna does. I couldn't do what Gaga does. They can't do what I do.

I had no interest in being your basic vanilla girl. I've been lucky enough that I haven't had to play that.