T. S. Eliot Quotes

I enjoy being influenced by other writers.

Nicki Minaj thanked me on the first mixtape that she put out. She shouted me out, said thank you for allowing her to borrow my English accent sometimes. And honestly, a lot of people have told me that I've influenced them.

Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.

Literature usually begets literature.

I'm usually the last to see my influence in other people's work. People give me stuff and say "Oh look, this guy's ripping you off," and I'm like "What do you mean?" Often I see the people that I've ripped off filtered into my own work. In other people's work, I can only see specific, tiny little instances of inflections stolen from another artist.

It took me six years to get close to Picasso. I learnt a lot from him, and he was an absolute genius. He almost became my grandfather at the time. It was like he was a magician or something.

Whatever I'm reading at the moment seems to influence whatever I'm writing.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

As Richard Pryor was to Eddie Murphy, that's what Kurt Vonnegut was to me.

All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.

Any creator owes a debt to past creation.

Almost any movie, no matter how original, is borrowing from some other movies.

I didn't think much about foreign readers when I began 'Naruto,' but I knew that many of the artists who influenced me had already been accepted overseas.

Yes, influences are enriching, and they can be found in every work of art, even the most original.

The original sense of the word 'influence' is 'to flow into.' For the most part, these writers that I admire... their style flows into me without my intervention, which is what explains the broad range of writers who I've been compared with; it reflects my reading.

I am suspicious of writers who say their work is original and influenced by nobody. If it is, it is probably uninteresting. The biggest source of novels is other novels.

It's so funny, I'm always stealing from Moliere, and nobody ever notices. I steal from him willy-nilly.

I've come to think of Dunnett as the literary equivalent of the Velvet Underground; Not many people bought the books, but everyone who did wrote a novel.

Every writer from Montaigne to William S. Burroughs has pasted and cut from previous work. Every artist, whether it's Warhol or, you know, Dangermouse or whoever.

Everybody influences everybody else, in my opinion. There are different trends in music all the time. No matter who starts them, if it's a true trend in the music, it ends up influencing other people as well.

It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm totally open to useful influence. I'm praying for it.

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

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.

Shakespeare is dangerous to young poets; they cannot but reproduce him, while they fancy that they produce themselves.

All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.