William Kraft Quotes

You can't just copy someone. There are so many different styles that you can just kind of pick and choose whatever it is you'd like to do.

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.

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

I never wanted to be that fad type of artist. When I looked up to artists, watching TV, I wanted to see somebody. I wanted to touch that person. I wanted to sound like them. I wanted to move like them. That' s what I want my fans to do. So that's why, everything that I do, the music I make, how I dress, it's all based off my lifestyle.

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.

I think of my drawing style like handwriting: it's a mix of whatever handwriting you're born with, plus bits and pieces you've pilfered from other people around you.

All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.

If you look at any creative person's work, you can see bits and pieces of their influences. That's what an artist does.

You don't show respect to Frank Sinatra and his great example by trying to sound exactly like him. You show it by sounding exactly like you, and that's the way jazz has always progressed as an art form.

When I take from my influences, it's rare that I do it literally.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn't play like Wynton.

It's been very important throughout my career that I've met all the guys I've copied, because at each stage they've said, 'Don't play like me, play like you.'

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

Authors from whom others steal should not complain, but rejoice. Where there is no game there are no poachers.

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.

Future's not everybody. The people who are taking my style are like my babies. I've got a tribe of kids that want to be like me... But I understand why people want to imitate the things I do. They're dope. It comes naturally to me. My fans can expect greatness. If I wasn't me, I would want to be me.

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

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

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

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

Why should the composer be more guilty than the poet who warms to fantasy by a strange flame, making an idea that inspires him the subject of his own very different treatment?

I take stuff because I'm inspired by it.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

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

The reason I put make-up on or wear the costume is to try and find my own style. It's like my guitar style - I'm just trying to be an original artist.