I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

That certainly is one approach to take. My own is to acknowledge the inner child and try to work with my first fascination with science fiction. I have tried to build on its idea content and narrative drive rather than to discard them.

I could give you some names of Workshop participants who are as good as many who are being published but haven't had the right editor recognize their merit or have not been adequately published.

It also is true that some ideas naturally work themselves out over a longer period of time than a single human life can encompass.

In hard-core science fiction in which characters are responding to a change in environment, caused by nature or the universe or technology, what readers want to see is how people cope, and so the character are present to cope, or fail to cope.

One should be willing to throw away a dozen ideas to come up with a good one, just as one should throw away a dozen words to come up with the right one.

I hope I'm still alive to see an expedition set off for Mars.

I prefer to bring these to the service of story rather than to let them replace narrative.

In science fiction a fantastic event or development is considered rationally.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

Imitation is the sincerest form of pain.

The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.

To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.

The worst acting is about imitation.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, but clones kind of get it wrong because we are promoting individuality and being proud of being yourself.

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

I don't like traditions, I am very personal, very independent, I don't like intimate ladies, I mean in German lieder there's a lot of copy, a lot of imitation, a lot of tradition, and this I have put it aside.

Imitation is the sincerest flattery.

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.

Ignorance and a narrow education lay the foundation of vice, and imitation and custom rear it up.

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?

The opponents of this process have always tried to vilify westernization as a poor imitation.

When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.

Unfortunately what came out of it was also kind of an imitation community with a lot of mindless conformity.

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.

Anyone who draws attention to himself as an individual, is viewed with suspicion. We acquired this tendency, of course, from America, and we must resist it: levelling, and imitation of what others are already doing.

My works are an imitation of my own past and present.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

The heroes of the present will retreat to the imitation they are anyhow.

The Cube is an imitation of life itself - or even an improvement on life.

Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done.

To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.

Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing.

No man was ever great by imitation.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'

Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.

There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind.

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Imitation is being rewarded. They're learning that if you fit right in the mold, you get rewarded. Music is no longer a form of expression - it's a means to a lifestyle.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

I'm a very big Notorious B.I.G. fan and I do an imitation of him that always cracks everybody up.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Imitation is flattery, and The Hills Have Eyes is a classic.