Creative Emulation Quotes

Whomsoever you follow, howsoever great, see to it that you follow the spirit of the master and not imitate him mechanically.

A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off

All the lousy little poets coming around trying to sound like Charles Manson.

I didn't want to be like Yeats; I wanted to be Yeats.

In the art world Robert Rauschenberg had been combining common materials that people thought was art and beautiful, and it was. If he could do that, I could emulate him.

I think any good artist - and I'm not saying that I am one - takes notes and should first emulate their heroes and then try to move beyond them.

A painter must not only be of necessity an imitator of the works of nature... but he must be as necessarily an imitator of the works of other painters. This appears more humiliating, but is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon any other terms.

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

I actually was consciously trying to emulate bands like Bruce Springsteen, and just trying to emulate what they do structurally.

I sometimes imagine a great writer as a sort of God-surrogate: the writer is doing his or her human-best to emulate what God might think of is, if God was inclined to observe some human beings and present their activities in the form of a narrative.

I think of other artists as generous when I get inspired by their work. That's why I like curating. You don't want to take someone else's art and have your way with it. You've got to be respectful of them.

He who studies to imitate the poet Pindar, O Julius, relies on artificial wings fastened on with wax, and is sure to give his name to a glassy sea.