Louis Dudek Quotes

What the world calls originality is only an unaccustomed method of tickling it.

The imitator treads a beaten walk, and with all his diligence can only find a few flowers or branches untouched by his predecessor, the refuse of contempt, or the omissions of negligence.

Imitation is for shirkers, like-minded-ness for the comfort lovers, unifying for the creators.

Imitators are but a servile kind of cattle.

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

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

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

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

There were times in my career when I would try to write songs like Bob Dylan... Artists get hooked up in that. To be a follower, you lose.

Ultimately, with every film I'd done before, there was a reference. They have their own uniqueness, but there was always a precedent.

I'm into emulation, not imitation.

I've seen stand up comedy, and after a while you start to notice that a lot of people are doing things that are like a lot of other people. There can be a bit of a herd mentality, and that's obviously less interesting because there's less going on. I'm just being totally frank with you.

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

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

We've all forgotten how to be original.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

A human being is not a machine. Especially when it comes to creating.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

Always think that in any area of the arts, you get maybe ten percent of people who are creative, original... and the rest are generally following on, copying.

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

It's no fun for me to cover a song and produce it the exact same way as it already exists. When I hear that happening, I have to say, 'What's the point?'

We have no precedents to guide us, and that is a glorious thing, for precedents, like other guides are disposed to grow tyrannical and refuse to let us do anything on our own initiative. Life grows wearisome in the countries where precedents and conventionality is rule and nothing can happen unless it has happen before.

Of course you can't do anything completely original.

I hate anything that seems like something that has been done.

Don't do anyone else's version of a hit song - it's gonna sound terrible. You just have to do what you do well and crank it up to 11.