“For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.”
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Chuck Palahniuk 555
American novelist, essayist 1962Related quotes
Introduction
Misquoting Jesus (2005)
Context: It is one thing to say that the originals were inspired, but the reality is that we don't have the originals—so saying they were inspired doesn't help me much, unless I can reconstruct the originals. Moreover, the vast majority of Christians for the entire history of the church have not had access to the originals, making their inspiration something of a moot point. Not only do we not have the originals, we don't have the first copies of the originals. We don't even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later—much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. As we will see later in this book, these copies differ from one another in so many places that we don't even know how many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.
“I do not paint by copying nature. Everything I do springs from my wild imagination.”
Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 22: quote in a letter to Ambroise Vollard, 1900
Quoted in: The Artist, Vol. 93 (1978) p. 5.
1970s
“♡ Copying is an act of love. Please copy & share.”
Copyheart.org home page (3 December 2010) http://copyheart.org
"Copying Is Not Theft - let the re-recording begin! (15 December 2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djVaJN0f0VQ ; also quoted in "Calling All Musicians: Can You Arrange This Song?" at QuestionCopyright.org http://questioncopyright.org/copying_isnt_theft · "We Are Creators Too: Nina Paley " (2009) — introduced by Paley singing a variant of the first stanza of her song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uN7upUXSFk · "Copying Is Not Theft - Official Version" (1 April 2010) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
Context: Copying is not theft
Stealing a thing leaves one less left
Copying it makes one thing more
That's what copying's for.
Copying isn't theft
If I copy yours, you have it too
One for me and one for you
That's what copies can do.
If I steal your bicycle,
You have to take the bus
But if I just copy it,
There's one for each of us!
Making more of a thing
That is what we call copying
Sharing ideas with everyone
That's why copying...
... Is fun!
“An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.”
Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)
“You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/business/worldbusiness/05iht-wbspot06.4109874.html, Spotlight: Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba.com - Business - International Herald Tribune, by SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOPJAN. 5, 2007 (The New York Times)
Variant: Everyones got to be different. You can't copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing.
Source: Lady Sings the Blues