Originality Quotes

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take the

~ Jim Jarmusch

You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things.

~ Andy Warhol

Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities.

~ Criss Jami

When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.

~ Criss Jami

Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever

~ Anna Quindlen

Originality is the best form of rebellion.

~ Mike Sasso

Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.

~ John O'donohue

If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.

~ Quentin Crisp

We are all feeding from each other, all the time, every day.

~ Dave Eggers

But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them—if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line—well, you’re deluding yourself. For one thing, it’s easier to plan derivative work—things that copy or repeat something already out there. So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal.

~ Ed Catmull

Those who say there are no more original ideas need to get out of the way of those of us who are creating them.

~ Steven Symes

Originality is the most deadly mirage in all of art. You can chase it from now until doomsday, and you'll only find yourself lost and dying of thirst.

~ Caitlín R. Kiernan

All genuinely creative ideas are initially met with rejection, since they necessarily threaten the status quo. An enthusiastic reception for a new idea is a sure sign that it is not original.

~ Eric Weiner

Sometimes a writer simply finds new ways of saying what has already been said because, ultimately, truth is unoriginal.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Whether you try too hard to fit in or you try too hard to stand out, it is of equal consequence: you exhaust your significance.

~ Criss Jami

Fashion is simply a guideline for style-less people to appear stylish.

~ Criss Jami

Creativity is easy.Originality is difficult.Relevance is a bitch.

~ Mark Rude

If your looking to write a book, your creativity, originality and simplicity is what will distinguish you.

~ Onyi Anyado

Pseudo-artists think that being an artist means opposing whatever seems to be an establishment. That is not creative at all. True creativity is the ability to gain perspective wherever you may have missed it before.

~ Criss Jami

Knock-offs may look good, but they never last as long as the real thing.

~ N.m. Silber

I would rather be a real Timex than a fake Rolex.

~ N.m. Silber

When there is silence, Give your voice. When there is darkness, Shine your light. When there is desperation, Offer hope.

~ Tim Fargo

Like almost all of Beefheart's recorded work, it was not even ahead of its time in 1969. Then and now, it stands outside time, trends, fads, hypes, the rise and fall of whole genres eclectic as walking Christmas trees, constituting a genre unto itself: truly, a musical Monolith if ever there was one.

~ Lester Bangs

Yes, be different, but not for the vanities of being different.

~ Criss Jami

Originality has nothing to do with producing something ’ new’ - it is about seeking the source, the primordial ground from which you draw and have always drawn your being. It comes about when one works from one’s origins, it is the dance of the eternal return… and is as ancient as the Dreamtime.

~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

Originality of mind untainted,And enthusiasm for life, unlimited.

~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

You don't have to reinvent the wheel... just steal the hubcaps.” ― Michael P. Naughton

~ Michael P Naughton

Creativity is the ability to produce ideas that are both original and valuable.

~ Gerard Puccio

The value of an artist is more because of his originality than his skill.

~ Amit Kalantri

Insanity is coasting through life in a miserable existence when you have a caged lion locked inside and the key to release it.

~ Morgan Freeman

Up until relatively recently, creating original characters from scratch wasn't a major part of an author's job description. When Virgil wrote The Aeneid, he didn't invent Aeneas; Aeneas was a minor character in Homer's Odyssey whose unauthorized further adventures Virgil decided to chronicle. Shakespeare didn't invent Hamlet and King Lear; he plucked them from historical and literary sources. Writers weren't the originators of the stories they told; they were just the temporary curators of them. Real creation was something the gods did.All that has changed. Today the way we think of creativity is dominated by Romantic notions of individual genius and originality, and late-capitalist concepts of intellectual property, under which artists are businesspeople whose creations are the commodities they have for sale.

~ Lev Grossman

Artistry, perhaps, is at its core being able to control change in interesting ways.

~ Jeff Ryan

No original thought still exists. People are original, each one of them. The same ideas that others had before you are waiting for you to bring them back to life in a new way. The part of who you are that is left behind within these old ideas is what makes them original all over again.

~ Ashly Lorenzana

There is nothing higher-class than real craftsmanship, diversity, originality and the service of skilled human hands.

~ Bryant Mcgill

With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the skill (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the quality of painting (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures nice or splendid. Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.

~ Wassily Kandinsky

If it aint broke, break it. Then build something better.

~ Jonathan Culver

I think the writer is initially set going by literature more than by life. When there are many writers all employing the same idiom, all looking out on more or less the same social scene, the individual writer will have to be more than ever careful that he isn't just doing badly what has already been done to completion. The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down.

~ Flannery O'connor

It's not what you lift, it's where you carry it.

~ David Foster Wallace

Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.

~ Idries Shah

I've finally decided to write about profit for a changeBut before I really started I already started to feel lameBaby what's it to a beast who manely to money remains untamed

~ Criss Jami