Eugene Delacroix Quotes

The politician who tries to ape his rival or predecessor is, almost by definition, a second rater, inferior to the real thing.

The idea of designing something that is like something else is incredibly uninteresting and boring.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

I had a date with a girl I called 'the parrot.' All she did was repeat everything I said. She never had an original thought of her own. Everything I liked, she liked. Everything I hated, she hated. It was annoying!

Being dull and boring is far more tragic than being tacky.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

People think that buying something for their home which is up-to-date is chic, but often it's a cliche. I call people who simply give clients the current 'thing' stylists not decorators.

I think trying to be offbeat is the most boring thing possible.

The worst art is when it's really convenient and comfy.

There has been an obvious effort to play it safe, to make 'Bonanza' a good family show that would offend no one and hit a consistent level of mediocrity.

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.

What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.

Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal. Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.

Banality is sometimes striking.

How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

Mediocre people have an answer for everything and are astonished at nothing. They always want to have the air of knowing better than you what you are going to tell them; when, in their turn, they begin to speak, they repeat to you with the greatest confidence, as if dealing with their own property, the things that they have heard you say yourself at some other place. A capable and superior look is the natural accompaniment of this type of character.

I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don't have any real knowledge.

You can put on as many airs as you want, but in the end, that dress is the same as you: an old, cheap design dressed up to look like its worth more than it is.

There is no sin worse in life than being boring and nothing worse than letting other people tell you what to do.

That's what the world is like: people talk as if they knew everything, but ifyou dare to ask a question, they don't know anything.

People ask me questions like, "Oh, you look so theatrical in your photographs. Is that what you're like when you walk down the street?" It's like, "Of course not." It's such a silly question - it's like being theatrical is a crime.

You must always steal, but only from the best people. Steal any trick that looks worthwhile. If you see Vivien Leigh or Robert DeNiro or Meryl Streep do something stunningly effective, and you can analyze how he or she did it, then pinch it. Because you can be sure that they stole it in the first place.

All you can do is make a piece of product, sell it on its own terms, stand behind it and hope that people will go see it. If you try to be like something else or appeal to any given group, then you can very easily end up being gratuitous and imitative. There's not much to be gained by that and I think too much time is spent going around trying to be like someone else.