Nothing is original (great quote)

by | Thursday, June 10, 2010


Unoriginal

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.” — Jim Jarmusch

More Jim Jarmusch quotes here. Nice design of a layout for this quote here. Photo credit Emily Smith from flickr.

Topics related to this post: Art | Creativity | Film | Fun | Philosophy | Plagiarism

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Color me Creative

I just ran across this blog (Color Me Katie) that just blew me away. Katie Sokoler is a freelance photographer and street artist living in Brooklyn - and her blog just throbs with life, and energy and the sheer pleasure of living. That's her down there blowing bubbles...

Two new photosets

I just uploaded two new photosets onto to Flickr. They are: Best of 2007 A photoset documenting the past 12 months (mostly family related stuff) Matt & Punya There was a recent article in the New Educator about the work Matt and I do together (the TPCK stuff). Here...

Social Media at Bloomfield Hills: The video

Back in November 2010, I had been invited by the Bloomfield Hills School District to speak to their administrators and leadership about issues related to social media and what it means for schools and districts. You can find out more about this session here. As I said...

Help me, find a story by Ursula Le Guin

Help me, find a story by Ursula Le Guin

 I am looking for a short story by Ursula Le Guin that I read many years ago growing up in India. The story has stayed with me but I cannot find it, despite many deep dives into the internet. I have posted on reddit, on the Ursula Le...

Keynote at MITE 2019, Sydney (video)

Keynote at MITE 2019, Sydney (video)

I was recently invited to present a Keynote at the Mobile Technology in Teacher Education (MITE) 2019 Conference hosted by The University of Technology, Sydney. This was the fifth edition of the conference, and as it turns out, I had given a keynote at the first...

Learning landscapes, special issue on creativity

My friend Teresa Foulger at Arizona State University  informed me about the fact that the journal LEARNing Landscapes has a special issue on creativity.  I had not heard of the journal before and I was pleasantly surprised by the articles in this special issue....

Eye Twisters

Eye Twisters: Ambigrams & other Visual Puzzles to Amaze and Entertain is a book edited by Burkard Polster, a professor of mathematics at Monash University. It features some of my work... From the back cover: Eye Twisters is all about ambigrams--words that are...

Douglas Adams & Computational Thinking

Douglas Adams & Computational Thinking

Illustration by Punya Mishra.See sketch of Douglas Adams at the end of this post.  I have always been a huge fan of Douglas Adams, trying to sneak in his ideas into my academic writing whenever I can. I had written about my previous attempts in a blog post...

The Five Spaces for Design in Education

The Five Spaces for Design in Education

Note: This post was co-authored with Melissa Warr. I love to talk about design and education. I like to hang out with people who care about design and education. This brings us to TalkingAboutDesign.com, a website/blog created by a group of graduate students (and...

3 Comments

  1. Punya Mishra

    @George, You are very welcome.
    @Joradan, thanks for regularly visiting the site and your comments.

    Reply
  2. George

    Thanks for the linkback.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Jordan Walker Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *