Quotes About Originality

A lot of big studio films, which are fun and great, tend to have a formula, and you've seen it before, and it's a new version of it.

The companies that won't do well will be the me-too companies: the fifth, sixth, seventh version of Twitter, etc.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'

The most important thing you can do as a performer is to be yourself, or be an onstage version of yourself. If you're not being true to yourself, and somebody likes that other version of you, you're kind of stuck.

With a lot of shows, what you'll see happen is they start off really well, and they're very original, but they become sort of a version of themselves. They stand outside the show... they become a cliche of the show they once were. That's the whole 'jumping the shark' thing.

If something comes around that would be a challenge, then that would be wonderful. But if it's a watered-down version of something I've already done, I'd rather do something else.

I was watching the Danish version of 'The Killing' when I got the audition for 'The Fall,' and I loved it; it was so original. I approached 'The Fall' with that in mind. I'd no problem with the violence - it was very clear from the script how horrifying the crimes were and that had to be shown, without going to extremes.

I want to be free to be any version of me I feel like being. I don't want to be McDonald's that serves the same food every time.

Don't do anyone else's version of a hit song - it's gonna sound terrible. You just have to do what you do well and crank it up to 11.

It's really rare in TV not to think, 'Well, I've seen a version of this before.'

I'm not trying to be the younger, blonder version of anyone. I'm trying to be Tomi.

I think once 'Empire' hit, there was a lot of bad black TV that followed, because we work in the business of hit-seekers and copycats, so they're like, 'Oh this is a show about black people; this is about music, OK let's do a version of that.' And, of course, it doesn't work because it's not organic.

Be You, Live Civil was a tour that I started, and it's just always something that I've been to myself. 'Be you, live civil' is like 'live my life.' That was my short version of saying to live my life.

I am always searching for something different or something fresh, something hasn't been done. But the truth is, at the end of the day, we're all sort of retelling something. We're doing a version of something that's already been done.

The more you see somebody else's version of something, the harder it is to make it your own.

When anyone pitches me - and I've heard it a million times: 'It's the black Seinfeld,' or, 'It's the new version of something that's already been successful' - I immediately shut it off. I won't ever entertain doing 'the new version of such-and-such.'

The idea of taking a brand that already exists and making a really poor-looking version of it, with acrylic or puffy paint, is really aesthetically pleasing to my eyes and also funny.

I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.

When one person does something that works, everyone else wants to do it. So it didn't surprise me at all to see people come with different versions of 'American Idol' and a lot of them are exactly the same but with different twists.

You have a lot of companies developing stuff that's just derivative. If 'The Voice' is the No. 1 show on TV, they say, 'Let's do 100 different versions of 'The Voice.' The problem is, by the time you get to market, it's already saturated, and everybody hates the format.

I've always loved that, on all the Dylan and Springsteen and Marley and Neil Young reissues that they've done: It's so cool to hear alternate versions and how the song started in their mind.

If we can ape other shows or even start Indian versions of international series by taking their franchise, why can't we take our shows to an international level?

You compare yourself to somebody who you think is a peer, and you can totally lose the plot, and not understand that you are nothing like them in the first place, and it was never you versus anybody.

I'd prefer for people to know that they're going to get some substance when they listen to my music versus hearing the same 'Oooh baby, I love you.'