393 Quotes About Originality

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.

Understand the rules then break them. That's creativity.

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

Why should anyone be so grateful for acceptance unless he doubts that he is acceptable, and why should a young, educated and successful couple have such doubts, if not due to the fact that they cannot accept themselves because they are not themselves.

All fantasy tales bathe in the same myth pool and soak in its archetypes and tropes. It's how each author tosses the stock ingredients of the salad that renders their telling unique.

There is this common notion that people are shallow and ignorant until they go out and see the world. I, on the other hand, went out and in comparison realized I was in pretty good standing.

Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had."[Commencement Speech; Mount Holyoke College, May 23, 1999]

If we had to earn our age by thinking for ourselves at least once a year, only a handful of people would reach adulthood.

Dream Big. You are a divine original and the world needs your unique contribution.