Les Wexner Quotes

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

We Americans love original ideas. But truly, there are already plenty of good ones out there, ours for the taking. If I were too proud to copy the ideas of others, I likely wouldn't have even a fraction of my current success.

What I do is, I look at rock guitar players, and I say to myself, 'What is this guy doing? What does he have that can inspire me?' I try to see what other people are doing and take what they have and turn it and twist it into my own thing.

I think that other people covering my work is really exciting... Im really open to that kind of thing because I think interpretation is an art form.

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

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.

I don't believe in originality in art. I think we exist on this earth to inspire each other, through our actions, through our deeds, and through who we are. We're always borrowing.

Don't be afraid to borrow. The great men, the most original, borrowed from everybody.

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.

I recently decided that I'm not an originator. I'm a synthesist.

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

I wouldn't say I'm a very original thinker, but if I have a good experience with something, I'll want to take it further or adapt it in some way.

Fashion is about change, don't you think?

The last person to stand still and repeat himself was Walt Disney. He refused to repeat himself. So to think that he'd be making the same kind of film in the year 2001 that he made in 1941 is absurd.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

I never was the battle rapper. That was never my thing. I always felt like it's enough room for everybody to do their thing. I like bringing new energy, re-inventing the wheel, so to speak, every time I come out.

Copiers do not collaborate.

If you read all the time what other people have done, you will the think the way they thought.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

I don't repeat that many styles if I can help, although some have become classics. I try not to repeat. I'd rather surprise people.

You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.

If you look at the most meaningful science fiction, it didn't come from watching other films. We seem to be in a place now where filmmakers make films based on other films because that's where the stimuli and influence comes from.

A lot of things you just stumble into: relationships or ways of putting characters opposite one another that really worked. So then it's not always so much about imitating other people, but imitating yourself, at least in your thinking.

For years that may mean imitation. Then, one day, it is like a door opening, and a new thought comes in. Why not try this instead. Suddenly he is doing something original, almost in spite of himself.