Original Quotes

I believe every translation is a process in which something is lost in the original precisely so that something is gained in the new text.

I’ve made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.

In order to be creative, you don’t have to be original.

Oratory is good only if it has the qualities of fitness for the occasion, propriety of style, and originality of treatment, while in the case of letters there is no such need whatsoever.

Be you. All of you. Without consequence. Without judgment.

The greater a man’s talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.

An original is a creation motivated by desire.

Wait, I’m deciding to be my own individual self. And it looks nothing like what anyone else is doing.

When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it’s a pretty honorable position to be in.

It is decidedly not true that “nice guys finish last,” as that highly original American baseball philosopher, Leo Durocher, was alleged to have said.