Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

I think anything created today can be said to be a ripoff. It's hard to find anything original any more.

Beware of direct inspiration. It leads too quickly to repetitions of what inspired you.

It keeps me moving when I see people doing stuff that I see as "my" direction. I think, "Oh, it's been tainted. Now I've got to do something new." There's nothing worse than working on your own stuff and thinking that someone else is following you along.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

Authors from whom others steal should not complain, but rejoice. Where there is no game there are no poachers.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

When it comes to other people's writing, my older influences are more powerful than more recent ones, partially because I'm now more worried that I'll suddenly accidentally steal something from another writer.

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

I am attracted to anything that does not feel derivative.

If you look at the most meaningful science fiction, it didn't come from watching other films. We seem to be in a place now where filmmakers make films based on other films because that's where the stimuli and influence comes from.

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

I don't look at other people's work because I don't want to be distracted by their ideas.

We Americans love original ideas. But truly, there are already plenty of good ones out there, ours for the taking. If I were too proud to copy the ideas of others, I likely wouldn't have even a fraction of my current success.

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.

The day I run out of ideas is the day I stop making records.

When starting a project, your influences are the things around you. It doesn't mean you have to sound like it or look like it or anything. It's just something new, and your curiosity becomes enthralled by it.

There's nothing new, even 'new' is inspired by something. We're all, either consciously or unconsciously, we're inspired.

Of course you can't do anything completely original.

When I take from my influences, it's rare that I do it literally.

Doing a remake is an open admission that, 'boss, I don't have anything of my own.'

Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy.

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.

You can't write the same book twice. Though I've been in historical musical situations, I can't go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.

When you have that first flash of what you think is going to be a great idea-from the mouth, from the hands-that's an amazing feeling. I don't think anything's quite as good as that.