Virginia Woolf Quotes

How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies.

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

Everybody is doing the same old thing.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

I'm kind of surprised that so many of those other books were almost exactly like mine. They even follow the form. There were some books that even copied the stamp. It shows so little imagination.

Aping what you've already done is just so dangerous and unrewarding.

We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.

So easy to fall into a rut, isn't it? Why should ruts be so comfortable and so unpopular?

When we get in a routine we can become zombie-like and shut down.

O imitators, you slavish herd!

Human beings all mimic each other.

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

Perfection is really boring!

I took up violin because my best mate had taken it up, so I did likewise.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

The idea of designing something that is like something else is incredibly uninteresting and boring.

Doing a remake is an open admission that, 'boss, I don't have anything of my own.'

That's all life is, I guess. Just a bunch of riffs. Look at me: I'm wearing a tie. Why am I wearing a tie? It's because I saw an adult wear a tie and I thought, Oh, that's what people do. We're all just trying to be what an adult is.

It irritates me to see people aping superstars.

Nobody's unique. Everybody copies off of each other. Everybody wears the same type of stuff. Nobody's an individual anymore.

Everything becomes too normal after a while.