A Quote by Steve Lacy

When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now. — © Steve Lacy
When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.
I love the working class, and everyone from it that I've met, and think they're incredible witty, inventive - there's a lot of poetry there. A lot of rough stuff as well. What there is, too, is an awful lot of expressiveness and intelligence and originality down there. And a lot of thwarted intelligence.
A good imitation is the most perfect originality
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.
I really don't work a whole lot as far as touring, but I do stand-up every night of my life, no matter where I am. It's really made the touring a lot less grueling. A lot of people get to this level and they're like, Now I do four cities in one week and they tour nonstop. I'm like, No, that sounds miserable. I'll just do two weekends a month. But whenever I'm in some awful place geographically, it's no longer that awful, because you've got the Internet and television.
There's going to be an awful lot of people who are going to get the opportunity to go up and explore among the stars.
A lot of improvisers mistakenly assume stand-up is awful, because there are a lot of stand-ups in the world that did not appeal to me. It was so easy to make a blanket statement when I was improvising only: 'Stand-up's terrible.' It's so ignorant and stupid to do that. But it's easy to do that. So that's where I came from.
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.
I tend not to like an awful lot of what is going out under my name now because it is just all product. Who needs it?
Pre-planning is essential. Research, research, research. If you are going to do a portrait, know as much as you can about the person beforehand. The web makes this very easy.
Unfortunately what came out of it was also kind of an imitation community with a lot of mindless conformity.
Neuroscience is now a very important research area in biology. We are now understanding a lot more about brains in babies, as well as children and adults.
I do a lot of research. For 'I Am Legend', I did a lot of research about survivors. If everybody is dead around you, how you can keep surviving. I went to the bookstore and found psychiatry books about survivors from the Holocaust.
A lot of times, when doing the paranormal research and doing an investigation, you don't know what you're going to encounter. You don't know what you're going to come up against. People have to realize that we don't know them and they don't know us. I'm talking about the people that live in the homes. Sometimes you don't know what you're going to encounter, what type of situation you're going to walk into.
I believe we came from nowhere. We show up, and we are now here. It's all the same. It just is a question of spacing. While we are in the "now here," we all contemplate where we are going. Where we are going is back to the "nowhere." We are going to rejoin the spirit from which all things emanate. These are the big questions for me - always.
It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
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