Ethan Slater Quotes

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you're doing so.

No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you.

The only thing I really recommend, if you're starting out in stand-up is to not try to copy anybody else. You can be influenced by people. I was influenced by Steve Martin and Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, but I never tried to be someone else. I always tried to be myself. And the reason people are successful is they're unique.

You can't be all of the people you're influenced by, so you make your own filter and create your own beautiful, unique thing in the world. Soak up the world, man, and make something of your own.

There were times in my career when I would try to write songs like Bob Dylan... Artists get hooked up in that. To be a follower, you lose.

The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public.

The best thing an actor can bring to a role is himself - that's no secret.

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

I certainly wouldn't want to be a Mini Me of any of the people whose footsteps I've followed in.

The moment you start thinking about what other people and other artists think, you're going to start writing like other people.

Born Originals, how comes it to pass that we die Copies?

If you're always looking at someone else, trying to imitate them, how can your natural gifts ever emerge?

I didn't want to feel like I was mimicking or copying someone else's performance, whether it's subconscious or not.

If you try all different styles that are in vogue, I think you con yourself. Me, I just stick by my guns; I don't want to play out of another man's bag.

It's hard work to find your own voice and not to copycat anything.

I feel like it's important, especially at young age, to find exactly what it is that makes your style so important as opposed to just trying to fit into the iconic styles of performers out there.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

I've never really tried to copy anyone; I like to have my own style.

No man was ever great by imitation.

I realized that I could try to sound like Waylon Jennings, or I could try to be like Waylon Jennings... but it's impossible to do both.

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

The more time we invest imitating others, the less that's available to discover and be ourselves.

I wanna be more like the Rihanna kind of, Beyonce kind of thing, but I don't want to compare myself to anybody, because I wanna be somebody new, too.

I think most people don't like others who, without a voice of their own, emulate the other. I certainly don't want anybody just to pick up my thoughts and hand them back to me.