Iliza Shlesinger Quotes

Nature, who permits no two leaves to be exactly alike, has given a still greater diversity to human minds. Imitation, then, is a double murder; for it deprives both copy and original of their primitive existence.

An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.

Man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams .

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

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.

I think that a lot of artists have succeeded in making what I might call "curator's art." Everybody's being accepted, and I always want to say, "Really? That's what you've come for? To make art that looks a lot like somebody else's art?" If I am thinking of somebody else's art in front of your art, that's a problem.

As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.

There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.

They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.

I like to make my voice sound like a piece of tin that's been stuck on the side of a chair, lifted up as far as it would go and then let to spring - "doooiiinng." I like to make it into a piece of metal from time to time and I can do it, both with the movements in my throat and with, uh, my little toys... So I like to take it beyond just a voice, more into the realms of a weapon.

If all you've got is somebody else's stuff that you've lifted, nothing really deep, then it is going to thin out.

In morals, always do as others do; in art, never.

Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

A poor original is better than a good imitation.

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.

Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.

Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing.

The way we look at it, everything is a sound.

Utter originality is, of course, out of the question.

They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.

People dressed up like me, at the comic-con in San Antonio. It's very rewarding.

The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation.

You can't be unique any way. Music is made from seven notes. You will always come back to something. Even if you think you are unique, you will come back to something that existed before you were doing what you are doing.

By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a perceiver and handler of things. His most valuable tools are his sense and his memory; what happens in his mind is primarily pictures.