George Gershwin Quotes

Originality is only variation.

... the genius never makes anything new, but always something that is just different, and the average talents provide him the possibility within which his genius condenses into achievements.

Your creativity before it gets formed into words and songs is the actual substance. No one else can see it, right? Unless you give it the shape of a song or a painting or whatever.

I never wanted the temptation to imitate or emulate something that had been done beforehand.

If there's an original thought out there, I could use one right now.

A creative moment is part of a longer creative process which, in turn, is part of a creative life.

I think the important thing about staying creative and staying sharp and original is not to look back too much.

Creativity has nothing to do with any activity in particular - with painting, poetry, dancing, singing. It has nothing to do with anything in particular.

Creativity is magic. Don't examine it too closely.

Creativity often consists of merely turning up what is already there.

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

It's very difficult to be original.

Creativity occurs in an act of encounter and is to be understood with this encounter as its center.

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

One must not imitate what one wants to create.

A requirement of creativity is that it contributes to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive.

Is it an original idea? Or is it something where you're literally a creative collagist? You're taking pieces of the world that you see around you and that are inside of you and put them together in a way that you see fit.

Copying isn’t particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work.

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.

Imagination can't create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions... So when we thing we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable.

To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

God has given us an imagination, and our imagination is really the principle tool from which all creativity and artistry comes from.

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