Cary Grant Quotes

I realized that I could try to sound like Waylon Jennings, or I could try to be like Waylon Jennings... but it's impossible to do both.

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

I didn't start to work until I realized what it was I had to offer. I stopped imitating performers I admired and started just being myself.

Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself.

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

Yeah, it's nice to look up to people, but the more you try to be somebody else, the less you are of yourself.

I really enjoy picking up the physical rhythm of somebody else, speaking with their voice. I've never done in anything in my own voice, and I can't imagine what that would be like. It would be weird, I guess.

I certainly wouldn't want to be a Mini Me of any of the people whose footsteps I've followed in.

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.

Ronald Reagan was the best Ronald Reagan ever, and Ronald Reagan was a cool guy. You're not Ronald Reagan. You can't run as him; you can't relive his career. You can't just have somebody else's career. You have to be you.

If you can't imitate him, don't copy him.

As actors you have this trait to imitate very easily. I don't want to imitate anything or limit myself of finding this creature, this woman because I'm looking at magazines and I'm reading comics, and I'm asking people that are avid readers of The Guardians.

Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people.

Every athlete learns by theft and mimicry.

Imitators? All right! Disciples if you like. But disciples be damned. It's not interesting.

How much more interesting life would be if only more people had the courage and skill to act themselves, instead of abjectly understudying some one else!

Write what you want to read. So many people think they need to write a particular kind of book, or imitate a successful style, in order to be published. I've known people who felt they had to model their book on existing blockbusters, or write in a genre that's supposed to be "hot right now" in order to get agents and publishers interested. But if you're writing in a genre you don't like, or modeling yourself on a book you don't respect, it'll show through. You're your first, most important reader, so write the book that reader really wants to read.

Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything -- from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.

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

Perfect imitations must share the fate of the originals.

When people say 'I want to be like you', I tell them if you want to be like me, then be yourself.

I think the beauty of the film industry is that if another person tries to become another person or act like another person or imitate another person, they don't really get too far. When that person starts to realize who they are and what they can bring to the table, they start to blossom and grow. With that, it's not so much me looking towards my predecessors who have paved the way in the industry - it's more getting inspired. I get little bits and pieces of what I can take from any and everybody.

If you write well, you don't have to dress funny.

Imitation is always insult--not flattery.

I used to sing like Nat King Cole. I mean he was the guy when I was comin' up, and you know, man, people used to say of me, "Damn, he sure do sound like Nat King Cole." But there was a day, and luckily for me it was early, when I woke up and asked myself, "Well, when are the ask me to sing because I sound like me?" So my advice is, never do anything that you don't like.