Sean Baker Quotes

Their films would probably be better if they'd seen a few more films, which runs counter to this idiotic theory that you run the risk of being influenced if you see too much.

In my view, the plangent artificiality of a lot of creative work results from the fact that the people who write novels, direct films and put on plays tend to read too many novels, watch too many films and go to too many plays.

It just sort of happened. I wrote like what I'd always read and what was in the movies... I'm sure popular music is supposed to be like this.

I listen to a lot of music. But I definitely haven't looked at an artist and like thought I want to have a song like this.

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

I'm usually the last to see my influence in other people's work. People give me stuff and say "Oh look, this guy's ripping you off," and I'm like "What do you mean?" Often I see the people that I've ripped off filtered into my own work. In other people's work, I can only see specific, tiny little instances of inflections stolen from another artist.

Stephen King says that if you forget an idea, then it can't have been any good. He means he, not you. You are not Stephen King. Do not attempt to emulate Stephen King at home.

Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.

There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.

A song doesn't just come on. I've always had to tease it out, squeeze it out. 'No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

With the word creative we stand under a mystery. And from time to time that mystery, as if it were a sun, sends down upon one head or another, a sudden shaft of light - by grace, one feels, rather than deserving, for it always is something given, free, unsought, unexpected.

Apparently one impression we are making... is that creativeness consists of lightning striking you on the head in one great glorious moment.

Originality is the only thing that counts. But the originator uses material and ideas that occur round him and pass through him. And out of his experience comes the original creation.

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.

A lot of people are really quick to say, "That song sounds like this." Or you - "He's tryin' to sound like this." And I'm always like, "You're damn right I am. That's how - that's why we're all here." You know, we all grew up idolizing another musician. That's how this works. That's how music is created.

Imagination is the beginning of creation.

You know, artists are influenced by other artists. We're all deeply influenced by what's around us; we don't make anything cold. Sometimes we think that we do. But within that, the most important part is that even though we're influenced, what are the levels of invention that we carry forth even as we've been influenced by something that's come before?

Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.

Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing.

A lot of the aspects of the world of the film are amalgams of things that already exist.

I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind.

I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don't pay attention 'cause it probably has floated into somebody else's head.

I try not to steal from myself, but the modalities create similarities.

All the best lyrics are written in ten minutes.

We always worry that we are copying someone else, that we don't have our own style. Don't worry. Writing is a communal act. Contrary to popular belief, a writer is not Prometheus alone on a hill full of fire. We are very arrogant to think we alone have a totally original mind. We are carried on the backs of all the writers who came before us. We live in the present with all the history, ideas, and soda pop of this time. It all gets mixed up in our writing.