Chris Hardwick Quotes

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

Once you start copying other people's licks, you begin thinking they're yours. Doing that's just an easy way out.

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

There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

Blake is damned good to steal from.

This is why improvisational music and comedy is so inspiring: You are seeing something being born, and that energy, there is no substitute for. These songs, most of them, are about a minute old when you hear them.

It's so funny, I'm always stealing from Moliere, and nobody ever notices. I steal from him willy-nilly.

We always want to do covers, but we found it kind of boring to do covers of bands in our genre, and we were always asked to do those.

I'm no innovator. If anything I'm a stealer, or borrower. I've stolen or borrowed from more people than you can shake a stick at.

Yes, I am influenced by everbody. But every time I put my hands in my pockets I find someone else's fingers there.

Where do you come up with these zingers, Clint? Do you own some kind of joke factory in Indonesia where you've got eight-year-olds working ninety hours a week to deliver you that kind of top-quality witticism? There are boy bands with more original material.

You don't have to be inspired by comedians. You have to be inspired by things that are real, whether it's music, comedy...a movie - that should inspire you.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before.

Don't be afraid to borrow if someone else has said it well. Winston Churchill said, The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. That's so well said. You could stay up all night and not think of that.

Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don't let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." Good to remember.

If you think a man draws the type of hands that you want to draw, steal ‘em. Take those hands.

Most everything I've done I've copied from somebody else.

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

A good way to have good ideas is by being unoriginal.

I am a child of cinema, and I am a cineaste, so everything I do is a reference to something I've heard or experienced or seen. And we all do it, we all steal. The ones who claim they don't, are obviously lying, because you do. You just have to make it your own.

I was raised a musician and I played classic music, violin, in orchestras and music comedy theaters, I have music running around in my head all the time, and if I hear music that's too interesting, I have to pay attention to it.

Some people think they are such geniuses and just thought of that. They think they are so smart, like they say "All this talk about Kurt Vile and no one asks him where he got his stupid name from," or, "No one asks where he stole his name from." And I'm like, "Oh, you're a genius."

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it.

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.