Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes

The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.

Music is just kind of an expression of who I am. It's what I do.

Dandyism is a variety of genius.

It can be frightening to turn your back on what others think is right. But I'm not the same as a lot of people - I'm quite artistic and quite eccentric sometimes. If you honour that, you fit into yourself better - and people accept you for what you are.

There are so many funny people and so many talented people, but the one thing nobody else has is my take on the world. So, when I'm developing my show, that's going to be the focus.

No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.

I don't think people are fans of me because I wrote hit songs. I think they're fans because I'm a lunatic or a weirdo. The hit songs came out of my idiosyncratic personality, not the other way around.

I think it is - the biggest plus the performer can have is to be a little unique.

Probably the No. 1 most important thing in my music is not to sound like anyone else. It is hard in this day and age.

If you're going to be an artist, you need to be an original.

Mr. Freeman: You are getting better at this, but it's not good enough. This looks like a tree,but it is an average, ordinary, everyday, boring tree. Breathe life into it. Make it bend - trees are flexible, so they don't snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch - perfect trees don't exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.

I never wanted the temptation to imitate or emulate something that had been done beforehand.

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius.

A genius is the one most like himself.

I think if you're lucky enough to find a voice in whatever you do, that voice will come sneaking out no matter what.

Instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities, in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent.

You've got to concentrate on the business of entertaining and writing songs. Always think different from the next person. Don't ever do a song as you heard somebody else do it.

Those same forces that drive a genius to create the things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces.

The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none.

Anybody talented in any way - they're called eccentric.

Own what you are, and I mean whether that's art, or whether that's fashion, or whether that's music, or whether that's acting, or whether that's politics, or whether that's literature; it's own what you are, and grab it, and, you know, be as prolific as possible.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

There's so many people out there who try to imitate what I do but I am the original.

True originality has its foundations in the soul, not in the mind, and when there is an effort to create something different it is usually a failure. Beethoven or Schumann or Chopin did not try to be original. They were original.

Eccentricities of genius.