Takashi Miike Quotes

Some of us have great original ideas and some of us depend on adaptations.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

Quite honestly, if I were doing work related to a living being or historical being where there was visual or audio recordings available, I would find that extremely difficult because I don't know how you would avoid the process of mimicry. And mimicry, to me at any rate, is a very dull prospect.

I can't copy nature.

Most of us don't invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.

All too often, when creative people pick out someone else's creative work as an inspiration, what they end up with is very, very far from the original.

I'm not interested in replicating 'Hedwig' like a virus.

In many senses, creativity and 'plagiarism' are nearly indivisible.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

If you're involved in with something that's original, you know, you'll always go back and try to rehash it.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.

Well, you might as well imitate your own program because if you don't, someone else will.

I invent nothing, I rediscover.

Even if you try to copy a film shot by shot, you still can't. It's still your own film.

Someone who copies a Van Gogh does not therefore become Van Gogh, and the same would go for Mozart or anyone else who contributed something that was original. Certainly in the way that I described visualizing numbers in abstract, meaningful shapes.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.

Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done.

The best imitation in the world is not half as good as a poor original.

I think we always move from imitation to assimilation to innovation, but I can't name you 20 people outside those we've already recognized who ever got to point three: innovation.

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

I'd rather do my own performance than copy someone else's.

My pleasure was to copy, not to create.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.