Retta Quotes

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

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

For the first six months of my stand-up career, I was talking like Danny Dyer. I was doing a lot of 'alright guvnors?' It wasn't true to who I was.

I used to watch everybody's stuff, but I found I would get slightly influenced by the other comics. I try to avoid it now.

Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

I was inspired by lots of people, certainly in acting and in writing and stuff, but I never wanted to be somebody else.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you're doing so.

Over the years, I think, people - actors, writers, whatever - lose their frame of reference. Their frame of reference is based on somebody else who did this or did that. Performances. So it just becomes a reflection of what already works. Like a warm-up. And that's an invitation to be inauthentic.

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 only thing I really recommend, if you're starting out in stand-up is to not try to copy anybody else. You can be influenced by people. I was influenced by Steve Martin and Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, but I never tried to be someone else. I always tried to be myself. And the reason people are successful is they're unique.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

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

I get to study and I got to mimic and what I basically did was I stole from every person that I could steal from. I was an imitator. That's what I was. It was years before I could take all of these things that I loved about all of these different artists and put them together and find my voice.

I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.'

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.

There were times in my career when I would try to write songs like Bob Dylan... Artists get hooked up in that. To be a follower, you lose.

I think all comics borrow from each other. Only a few have an original voice, and I wasn't one of them. In the end, I couldn't figure out who to steal from, so I stopped doing it.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

I loved Stephen Wright, and I loved Mitch Hedberg, but they seemed like geniuses you could never emulate. You'd just be ripping them off.

It takes a long time to find your own voice. Along the way, you imitate all the things that influence you - in my case Johnny Cash, Bowie, John Lydon.

Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

You find a lot of ideas from my shows in adverts now. I find it a compliment.

Hey, Christian rock, if you want to be good, stop copying U2. U2 already did it. You know what I mean? There's a lot of U2-esque Christian rock.