Quotes about Originality

The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

All imitation in morals and in life is wrong.  Through the streets of Jerusalem at the present day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders.  He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation. 

Art is theft.

I do not search; I find.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.

To copy copies is not normally safe, but it is safe to copy Paul, for he was fully surrendered, wholly sanctified, completely satisfied,

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

I never presumed that a technique of composition or an idea was so special that just using it would guarantee the quality of the music.

It's a beautiful way to put it: Leave the poetry in what you make. When something becomes too polished, it loses its soul. It seems robotic.

Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.

There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.