Being Original Quotes

A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original.

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

The beauty of ideas is that they are like waves in the ocean and they connect with things that came before them, and I think it is very important to embrace things that interest you and influence you, and incorporate them into what you do, as all artists have always done. The ones that say they don’t, are lying. Or are afraid that their work won’t be seen as being original, somehow.

The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

If being original means having to throw paint in front of a jet turbine to hit a canvas 50 ft away then lets not be original.

Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself.

We are not in the business of being original. We are in the business of reusing things that work.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I really think that being yourself, being original, being outside the box is starting to be appealing to people.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

I always took a great deal of pride in being original.

You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook.

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.

One essential ingredient for being an original in the day of copies is courageous vision.

I find that the very things that I get criticized for, which is usually being different and just doing my own thing and just being original, is the very thing that's making me successful.

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

I've always been noted for being original and doing different thing. So for me to hop on the train that's going on would be - shoot, if I wanted to hop on the train, I might as well have hopped on gangsta rap back when it was popular and tried to do that.

Select only things to steal that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

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.

I've always been obsessed with drums. They fascinate me. Any other instrument - nothing. I play acoustic guitar a bit. But it's always been drums first and foremost. I don't reckon on this Jack-of-all-trades thing. I thing that felling is a lot more important than technique. It's all very well doing a triple paradiddle - but who's going to know you've done it? If you play technically you sound like everybody else. It's being original that counts.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself.

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.

Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.