Quotes About Originality

Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it's a big deal to bow--or kneel or get knocked down--to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not somebody else's. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be.

A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.

Human beings are not very imaginative nor creative, so we try to put all our experiences into existing templates and categories based on our previous experiences.

Copyright (C) 2012 by Michael Swanwick

Estaba harta de ser tan única.

Es como contar un chiste. Cualquiera puede recordar las palabras. Cualquiera puede repetirlo. Pero para hacer reír necesitas algo más. Contar un chiste no lo hace más gracioso. Como ocurre con muchas cosas, es mejor vacilar que precipitarse.

My plan was ill conceived, against convention, and, above all, silly. I loved it the moment I thought of it.

It didn't matter that everyone else seemed to be doing it. To butcher a cliche, if everyone jumped off a bridge, they would all get wet. And some were going to drown. Or

We also usually got the best results, probably because not only do we think outside the box, we trample it, change its shape, hide it from all its loved ones, and then hold it for ransom.

Nothing can be truly replicated. Not a love, not a jewel, not a single line.

I preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it." - reference to Andy Warhol

I preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it.

To be original, seek your inspiration from unexpected sources.

Experience is the opposite of being creative.

Be true to your subject and you will be far more likely to create something that is timeless.

it's a rare day when she speaks in anything but platitudes--all those exhausted phrases and hand-me-down ideas that cram the dump sites of contemporary wisdom

You had to invent something. It's not possible to leave it blank. The mind won't let you.

Ma in una cosa è identica a sua madre: che salvo rare eccezioni, quando parla dice solo ovvietà - tutto quel repertorio di frasi fatte e idee usate che riempie le pattumiere della saggezza contemporanea. [...] Ahi, ahi, povera Rachel…proprio non ne poteva fare a meno. La mia unica figlia stava al mondo da ventinove anni e non era mai riuscita a produrre una frase originale, con un qualcosa di totalmente e irriducibilmente suo.

Everyone is broken-hearted except for the drastically unimaginative

I rationalized that there are only so many notes and therefore only so many combination of notes, so it stood to reason that there are so many songs.

It'd taken only a few hours, but I felt like Michelangelo staring at the Sistine Chapel after four years of hard labor, like Banksy after spending six days searching the Internet for ideas to steal and three minutes of sidewalk vandalism to execute them.

I don't get why people are so intrigued with being normal.

John Quincy Adams strove to escape commonplace thoughts.

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.