Lukas Foss Quotes

Someone very smart once said to me, "Steal, don't borrow." So if there's anything good in anything anyone else does, it's fair game. I think that everything I've ever done at some point is part of someone else's legacy.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

I take stuff because I'm inspired by it.

There's nothing new, even 'new' is inspired by something. We're all, either consciously or unconsciously, we're inspired.

The Great don't innovate, they fertilize seeds planted by lackeys, they leave to others the inhaling of the flowers whose roots they've manured. A deceptive memory may be the key to their originality.

Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

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

Authors from whom others steal should not complain, but rejoice. Where there is no game there are no poachers.

I know when somebody's heard my music. I can hear it in their music.

But inspiration? - That's when you come home from abroad and are asked: Well, have you found inspiration? - and fortunately you haven't. But the impressions sink in, of course, and may emerge later: None of us has invented the house; that was done many thousands of years ago.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Most of us don't invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.

Everyone steals from something or someone.

I don't think I really invented anybody. I have drawn on real life.

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

I don't look at other people's work because I don't want to be distracted by their ideas.

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

You can take things that Jimi Hendrix took, from Curtis Mayfield or from Buddy Guy for example, because we are all children of everything, even Picasso. But if you want to stand out, you have to learn to crystallize your existence and create your own fingerprints.

When starting a project, your influences are the things around you. It doesn't mean you have to sound like it or look like it or anything. It's just something new, and your curiosity becomes enthralled by it.

Sometimes I'm more inspired by stuff that tells a story and less inspired by stuff that's not a natural extension of what I'm already doing.

I do know there's a lot of music where Led Zeppelin has been leant on. We didn't do anything about it. And I wouldn't want to, either.

We all borrow and steal and copy from each other, and that's the way I think people get inspired.

I am not overly impressed by the great names and reputations of those who might be trying to beat me to an invention. It's their 'ideas' that appeal to me. I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor