Arnaud Desplechin Quotes

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.

I'd rather do my own performance than copy someone else's.

I like to create something that's unique and kind of true to myself and authentic and everything. I don't really like to mirror myself after different artists.

If you can't imitate him, don't copy him.

It's never good to just imitate somebody. That never works, because then you're not filling it with anything.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

I've never really tried to copy anyone; I like to have my own style.

No man was ever great by imitation.

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

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'

I couldn't imitate anyone if I wanted to.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Don't imitate. Write what you know about, that has to be your goal.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.

At the end of the day, you can't do a copy of somebody.

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

Everything I do is me. I don't like taking ideas from people unless they're the G.O.A.T.

In terms of my actual acting, I don't really like to to copy anyone or replicate anything that I've seen.

It's okay to be inspired by other people and it can be a useful learning tool to play other people's music, but let out what's inside of you.

If you try to sound like somebody else, it will never work because we already have that person. You are noticed when you try to be an original sound.

You can’t learn your craft by copying me or anyone else. I hope what I do can do is in some way inspire others but I would be appalled if I thought my work was being studied as ‘the right way to do the job’. My way is just one of an infinite number of ways to do the job.

Bring individuality into things, do not just be an imitator. To imitate is to miss life.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

I didn't want to imitate anybody. Any movement I knew, I didn't want to use.