Jasper Johns Quotes

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

No, generally I think influence is used as a nice word for plagiarism.

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

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

When a writer tries to copy another writer, it's doomed to fail.

When you snatch little pieces of other people's lives and try to palm them off as your own, that's more disgusting than anything. Robin Williams is a huge thief. Denis Leary is a huge thief. His whole stand-up career is based on Bill Hicks, a brilliant guy who died years ago.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

Well, you might as well imitate your own program because if you don't, someone else will.

Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don't know in your own soul.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

When it comes to other people's writing, my older influences are more powerful than more recent ones, partially because I'm now more worried that I'll suddenly accidentally steal something from another writer.

I'm not trying to feed off of a concept that another artist had - that's not what I do.

I don't want nobody to ever say, 'I coulda done that beat' or 'I know where you got that from.'

And I don't want people to think that I make movies based on other films.

In many senses, creativity and 'plagiarism' are nearly indivisible.

The last thing you want to do as a creator is take something of someone else's when you love him.

I do hear snippets on the radio. I do hear a little bit of me, sometimes great chunks of me. But I have to take that as a compliment; there's no way you can get sour grapes about that. But if somebody starts taking your whole new thing lock, stock, and barrel, and do their own version of it before you do it, that's not on.

If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research.

I don't think anybody came into the movie business to be unoriginal and plagiarising and not having an original idea in their brain.

I don't read much of what I write because I worry about unintentionally borrowing something.

I realized that I could try to sound like Waylon Jennings, or I could try to be like Waylon Jennings... but it's impossible to do both.

To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.

Too afraid of plagiarising someone, so I stopped reading fiction in 1981.