Ridley Scott Quotes

Good taste is the enemy of creativity.

Genius Borrows nobly.

Too much good taste can be very boring. Independent style, on the other hand, can be very inspiring.

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

If you want to be creative, go where your questions lead you.

I don't think there's anything really wrong with influence because I think that one can use another man's art as material either literally or just implying that they're doing that, without it representing a lack of a point of view.

I don't believe in originality in art. I think we exist on this earth to inspire each other, through our actions, through our deeds, and through who we are. We're always borrowing.

You know if I see a work that really I am very affected by and inspired by then it makes me want to try things with my work that maybe I hadn't considered trying before and I think that is the biggest complement that you can pay somebody.

There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

Learn the rules and then break them in such a way as to exercise good taste.

If someone asks me what inspires me, I always say, "That which is missing," because I don't want to copy everything that's already happening. I feel like when you copy, you blend in, and when you blend in, you get lost.

If the inspiration is genuine and it's coming from the right place, that's what I like and want to be a part of.

If you think a man draws the type of hands that you want to draw, steal ‘em. Take those hands.

A good film to me is like lightning in a bottle. I used to think that meant hit and run. But then I've changed my definition about what lightning in a bottle means. I think it means that you wait for that surprising moment that you really didn't expect would happen, as good as it may have gone in rehearsal.

The worst thing you can do is say to yourself, "I want to be just like somebody else." You have to absorb knowledge from someone else, but ultimately you have to find your own voice.

I am a child of cinema, and I am a cineaste, so everything I do is a reference to something I've heard or experienced or seen. And we all do it, we all steal. The ones who claim they don't, are obviously lying, because you do. You just have to make it your own.

New ways I go, a new speech comes to me; weary I grow, like all creators, of the old tongues. My spirit no longer wants to walk on worn soles.

All I want to be is, someone that makes, new things and, thinks about them.

I don't want to impress, I want to inspire.

I rather want my things to be copied than me copying. I would feel ashamed!

The beauty of ideas is that they are like waves in the ocean and they connect with things that came before them, and I think it is very important to embrace things that interest you and influence you, and incorporate them into what you do, as all artists have always done. The ones that say they don’t, are lying. Or are afraid that their work won’t be seen as being original, somehow.

Even if you're doing something that the studio sends you, or something that's based on a book or story, at the end of it all, you try to make whatever it is your own. This is based on my love of horror movies. Everything is based on something, in some way.

If anything, it's a little intimidating because there's usually a lot of brilliant work and a lot of brilliant ideas out there that you wish you had thought of, or that you just admire for the originality of it or the difference from what you've been thinking of.

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.