Steve Jobs Quotes

Someone very smart once said to me, "Steal, don't borrow." So if there's anything good in anything anyone else does, it's fair game. I think that everything I've ever done at some point is part of someone else's legacy.

If an artist may say nothing except what he has invented by his own sole efforts, it stands to reason he will be poor in ideas. If he could take what he wants wherever he could find it, as Euripides and Dante and Michelangelo and Shakespeare and Bach were free, his larder would always be full, and his cookery might be worth tasting.

Artists everywhere steal mercilessly all the time and I think this is healthy.

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

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

If you capture the first thought that you have when you're creating, and then play that to people, it's kind of like the listeners are part of that beginning. And that's the most exciting part.

There's something about coming up with something out of nothing. I work with somebody else's creation already, and I just try to make it better.

I think that other people covering my work is really exciting... Im really open to that kind of thing because I think interpretation is an art form.

We all borrow and steal and copy from each other, and that's the way I think people get inspired.

... 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.

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

One musician listens to another musician, and you get inspired and then you do your thing, but it's yours.

I think it's a big part of being a creative person.

Anytime something becomes a success in this way you always get imitators. I'm an imitator of the guys I love. I imitate people like Frank Miller, who is a huge inspiration to me.

There's a paradox in the notion that creativity should be a habit. We think of creativity as a way of keeping everything fresh and new, while habit implies routine and repetition. That paradox intrigues me because it occupies the place where creativity and skill rub up against each other.

An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.

I don't think there's anything really wrong with influence because I think that one can use another man's art as material either literally or just implying that they're doing that, without it representing a lack of a point of view.

Every piece of technology, every piece of art, basically everything manmade comes from an idea.

But I do nothing that I don't like, such as "inventing" up to the arty or "down" to the corny. I happen to relish a certain type of corn. What I think is the really dangerous approach is the "let's be artistic" attitude. I know that artistry just happens.

The beauty of ideas is that they are like waves in the ocean and they connect with things that came before them, and I think it is very important to embrace things that interest you and influence you, and incorporate them into what you do, as all artists have always done. The ones that say they don’t, are lying. Or are afraid that their work won’t be seen as being original, somehow.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

You can think of creativity as applied imagination.

Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else.

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

The creative is always an act of recombination, with something added by new juxtaposition—as making a spark requires two things struck together.