Augusto Roa Bastos Quotes

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

It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, mien, inventions and actions of others.

It's hard work to find your own voice and not to copycat anything.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

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

If you copy then it is not self-expression.

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

The only way you can get good, unless you're a genius, is to copy. That's the best thing. Just steal.

Don't look at all at what other people are doing. Think of what you're doing as completely fresh because if you imitate you're dead.

You want to stake your own claim. You don't want to be called a copycat.

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.

Imitation has to be avoided. Understanding should be the only law, never imitation.

You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling.

I don't think anybody came into the movie business to be unoriginal and plagiarising and not having an original idea in their brain.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

No man was ever great by imitation.

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.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

I've been telling my students, 'Imitate, imitate.' And they say, 'Well, what if I plagiarize, or what if I'm not original? I want to be myself.' And I always tell them, 'Your self will shine through'... If you allow yourself to feel deeply and honestly, what you say won't be like anyone else.

The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative.

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 think most people don't like others who, without a voice of their own, emulate the other. I certainly don't want anybody just to pick up my thoughts and hand them back to me.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

I'm into emulation, not imitation.

I guess if you have an original take on life, or something about you is original, you don't have to study people who came before you. You don't have to mimic anybody. You just have a gut feeling inside, an instinct that tells you what's right for you, and you can't do it in any other way.