John Cameron Mitchell Quotes

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

I think it's my nature to try and make original content, and that's what I've done, is just try and approach things in an original way, and do things differently.

I say to my pupils, 'You can pitch me any thing you've got, but tell me why you're the only person who can write it in the world. Keep digging.'

Agents and publishers are always looking for something 'different,' a fresh viewpoint and a new voice, not just re-hashed versions of stuff that's gone before.

That's what as an artist you always try to do. To try to be a sharper mind than the average person.

An idea you have might not be original. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original.

Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don't let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." Good to remember.

His hypothesis goes to this - to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.

My own thing is in my head. I hear sounds and if I don't get them together nobody else will.

To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.

Whether it’s a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one’s own eyes-which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification- which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.

An artist must find his expression closely linked to his individual experience or else follow in the old grooves resulting in lifeless forms.

My ideas and creativity are the sources of inspiration for me.

Most writers have very little that's important or valuable to offer; most of them are just repeating each other.

If it's not happening, write your own thing!

Jean Renoir once suggested that most true creators have only one idea and spend their lives reworking it, but then very rapidly he added that most people don't have any ideas at all, so one idea is pretty amazing.

Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.

You can't have a masterpiece without madness.

Imitation always stinks. When I take photos, I don't go back. I don't look at the past. I'm always original.

I thought that from the moment someone else could do the same as myself, there was no difference between the pictures and they should not be signed. Afterwards I realized it was not so and began to sign my pictures again. Picasso had begun again anyhow.

Apparently one impression we are making... is that creativeness consists of lightning striking you on the head in one great glorious moment.

The true painter must be able, with the most usual things, to have the most unusual ideas.

I don't chase what everyone else is looking for. Being creative is all about you.

Creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is, for example, and this may surprise you, absolutely unrelated to IQ, provided you're intelligent above a certain minimal level.