Martin Landau Quotes

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

If it feels like we're re-creating something rather than creating something, we don't do it.

Of course you can't do anything completely original.

I always imagine, and try to be on the lookout, for new things, for references that can inspire me creatively so I can showcase things that people haven't done before or that are new.

I never feel I repeat myself. I really go out of my way to amuse myself. I would be bored stiff. If I feel the déjavu when I'm doing something, I stop and rethink and rework it.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

Good literature can be created only with something that is different from literature.

Generally what I produce is new. Of course, they are often variations on the same subject.

It is always possible to create something original.

In the creative industries, there are few things more exciting than a zinger - a thought, idea, line, plot device - anything really, that just totally works in a fundamentally new and fresh way. It's like a uniquely lovely melody or a new taste idea in cooking. Something special, something new, something wonderful. They're also very rare.

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

I always say that I'm at my best when there's no example of what the character is supposed to be. I thrive when there's not much and I have to create it.

I've got nothing very original to say myself.

You can’t learn your craft by copying me or anyone else. I hope what I do can do is in some way inspire others but I would be appalled if I thought my work was being studied as ‘the right way to do the job’. My way is just one of an infinite number of ways to do the job.

I find it inspiring and I always think when I'm working on something new, whether it's a new kind of character or a new kind of story or new kind of camera, it gets my creative wheels spinning.

Originality, of course, is what occurs when something new arises out of what's already been done.

There are people who are originals and the stuff they make really is new. It isn't based on anything else. But I've decided I'm not that-I was never that. My abilities are to synthesize a wide range of references and ideas into something that feels relatively unified and coherent.

Originality houses many rooms, and the views from the windows are all different.

Originality is the only thing that counts. But the originator uses material and ideas that occur round him and pass through him. And out of his experience comes the original creation.

Utter originality is, of course, out of the question.

Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.

When you make something that everyone likes, it's very easy to say, "Well, I'll just repeat that." Because that was easy. I have a formula. But creatively, it's not very interesting.

It's very difficult to be original.

Originality provokes originality.

The world is forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original; the only original author being God.