Paul F. Tompkins Quotes

I'm not aware that I was consciously influenced by any director, though these things often happen unnoticed, submerged in the unconscious.

Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist, but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

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

There's no shame in stealing - any actor who says he doesn't is lying. You steal from everything.

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

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.

Only lately, like within the last few years, have I had people actually do an impression of me to me, which weirds me out to think of what they have picked up on, without ever realizing it myself.

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

What's weird is that I work with these directors and then I start channeling them. I kind of turn into them a bit - which is cool when you're working with Clint Eastwood.

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.

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

I'll be honest. We copied everyone... the Beatles, the Bachelors. It was the only way people would even listen to you.

In my mind, there are too many copycat web products out there that are doing the same thing.

If I'm seeing you, you're going to influence me. I'm sorry - I'm just that way. I'm a big sponge. You can't copyright an aesthetic.

I have an unconscious burglar living in my mind: If I read something, it's mine. I can read Middle English stories, Geoffrey Chaucer or Sir Thomas Malory, but once I start moving in the direction of contemporary fantasy, my mind begins to take over.

Nicki Minaj thanked me on the first mixtape that she put out. She shouted me out, said thank you for allowing her to borrow my English accent sometimes. And honestly, a lot of people have told me that I've influenced them.

I'm a plagiarist - I always look back at other movies, and I steal, but I steal well, and I reinvent.

All too often, when creative people pick out someone else's creative work as an inspiration, what they end up with is very, very far from the original.

The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise.

I borrow bits from everyone.

I am suspicious of writers who say their work is original and influenced by nobody. If it is, it is probably uninteresting. The biggest source of novels is other novels.

I'm often compared to Alan Rickman. I wish.

I started when Chris Rock did 'Bigger & Blacker.' I used to watch that before I went onstage as inspiration to get hype, but I noticed I started taking on his cadence and talking like him. I was also doing the New York-style comedy thing, which was angry and annoyed. I was creating a persona instead of trying to embrace my own.