Arthur Hailey Quotes

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

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

Sometimes, I think filmmakers grab too much from real life.

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

You'd have to be completely crazy not to be influenced by and take from other artists. It's completely impossible not to.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

I take stuff because I'm inspired by it.

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.

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.

It's intimidating any time to have a piece of art that someone else created, and that person says, 'Let's see what you created based on what I created.'

When I take from my influences, it's rare that I do it literally.

All art is theft.

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me.

Originality is the only thing that counts. But the originator uses material and ideas that occur round him and pass through him. And out of his experience comes the original creation.

I'm always cribbing from real life. I'm not a very creative filmmaker.

Art is either revolution or plagiarism

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

Wow, I wish I could have done something like that.” That’s the thing, with other filmmakers, if I like them I just feel admiration. And yes, I usually say, “I wish I could have been part of that creative process,” because the films I admire like that are so specific that I know the creative process is also so specific, it’s nothing you could just imitate.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

Some of us have great original ideas and some of us depend on adaptations.

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

Stories come to me and I don't know where they come from, but afterwards I can look back and say, 'Oh yes, that's got a little bit of me, or a little bit of my own son in it'. That's where ideas come from.

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.

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.