" I have a theory that the only original things we ever do are mistakes."
-- Billy Joel

"Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself."

-- James Stephens

"Be regular and orderly in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

-- Gustav Flaubert

"There is no such thing as imperfection, just originality."

-- Gina La Morte

"The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before."

-- Goethe

"It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur."

-- Wallace Stevens