Robert Silverberg Quotes

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

You must neither completely nor partially copy the art of others. If so, you will be producing kitsch.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

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

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done.

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

Originality is the art of concealing your source.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

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

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

Man is an idiot. He doesn't know how to do anything without copying, without imitating, without plagiarizing, without aping. It might even have been that man invented generation by coitus after seeing the grasshopper copulate.

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

You may imitate, but never counterfeit.

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

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

When a writer tries to copy another writer, it's doomed to fail.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

No, generally I think influence is used as a nice word for plagiarism.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

If you copy then it is not self-expression.