George Steiner Quotes

The politician who tries to ape his rival or predecessor is, almost by definition, a second rater, inferior to the real thing.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.

There is no room in the world, as you say, for second rate work.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

Over the years, I think, people - actors, writers, whatever - lose their frame of reference. Their frame of reference is based on somebody else who did this or did that. Performances. So it just becomes a reflection of what already works. Like a warm-up. And that's an invitation to be inauthentic.

Technique! The very word is like a shriek of outraged Art. It is the idiot name given to effort by those who are too weak, too weary, or too dull to play the game. The mighty have no theory of technique.

I wish I came from a more pure place. I don't have something to say from the bottom of my soul. I just know how to take stuff I like and repackage it in a slightly different way.

Britain is producing some of the worst films in the world. Our film industry is desperate to be part of America, and we just churn out flaccid imitations of bad films over there.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people's progress.

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'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.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

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.

Born Originals, how comes it to pass that we die Copies?

When someone writes something dazzlingly brilliant, people want to imitate it. The result is a lot of less-than-brilliant knock-offs. Elves, Dwarves, Goblin army, cursed ring, evil sorcerer. Tolkien did it. It rocked. Let's move on. Let's do something new.

I'm no innovator. If anything I'm a stealer, or borrower. I've stolen or borrowed from more people than you can shake a stick at.

Don't try to be original; just try to be good.

People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular- and too lazy to think of anything better.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

Commonplace people have an answer for everything and nothing ever surprises them. They try to look as though they knew what you were about to say better than you did yourself, and when it is their turn to speak, they repeat with great assurance something that they have heard other people say, as though it were their own invention.

It is the highest form of culture and craftmanship in art to use local materials. That way you stand a chance of adding to culture. The other way you are in danger of merely imitating it.

An imitator is a man who succeeds in being an imitation.