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 them to.
MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004
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"Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again"
For substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the gamerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment.There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
The Ecstasy of Influence
Not by any means. More like a tasteful thief.
The only art I will ever study is stuff that I can steal from.in response to "Since you put yourself first, do you consider yourself an original thinker?" From Playboy, September 1976.