Conan O’Brien said: “It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.

Modern creators do the opposite though. They refuse to imitate others and stubbornly insist on originality, which they hold as their highest virtue — even when it comes at the expense of quality

But Tarantino’s originality begins with imitation. He’s famous for replicating and building upon scenes from other movies

Directors watch movies not just to be entertained, but also to see how they’re made. Consciously or not, they’re developing their own mental Pinterest board of ideas to borrow and build upon in their own work. 

Lucas felt the triad of mythology, folklore, and fairy tales had disappeared in the West—and he wanted his new film to revive it. In order to align the story with the classical motifs that’d reverberated through so many human cultures, Lucas re-wrote his draft of Star Wars in order to align it with Cambell’s work. 

Rather than standing on the shoulders of people who’ve come before them, they look within themselves for a breakthrough idea.

fetishizing originality. I think this part of the disease comes from academia, where people do study those who’ve come before them—but only so they can do something different

originality and usefulness are not the same thing. I worry that academics are so focused on checking the “nobody’s ever written about this before” box that they sometimes forget to make useful contributions to human knowledge. 

before the 20th century, if you asked anybody about the purpose of creating art, they would have said: “To make something beautiful.”

Einstein’s paradigm-shifting invention of general relativity was enabled by decades of studying classical physicists, whose ideas he later built upon.

Hunter S. Thompson once hand-wrote every word of The Great Gatsby so he could feel what it’s like to write a great novel. Robert Louis Stevenson meticulously copied paragraphs he enjoyed, and once he got familiar with them, he threw the books to the other side of the room to force himself to rewrite paragraphs from memory.

plagiarism is wrong. The problem is that our tormented fear of plagiarism has clenched its claws around the things that are actually good for you. Out of excessive trepidation, we’ve lost touch with the subtle, but important distinction between stealing other people’s work without giving them credit (which is obviously a bad thing) and mirroring the style or values of a writer you admire (which should be praised and promoted).

Throughout human history, most imitative learning happened through apprenticeships.

Today, things have changed. We’ve dropped apprenticeships in the name of efficiency. Instead of doing an apprenticeship, wannabe Da Vincis are training at professional art schools.

Common pieces of advice like “get rid of the passive voice” are shallow, low-leverage points of instruction compared to the real, but hard-to-describe benefits of creating your own vocabulary or becoming a more observant person — both of which are better learned through imitation. 

Following a recipe can make you a great dinner host, but it won’t turn you into Gordon Ramsay

John O’Donohue put it when he wrote: “In the presence of the other, you begin to see who you are in how they reflect you back to yourself.” 

Through imitation, you can create your own apprenticeship. I know a painting coach who tells her students to listen for resistance in the imitation process. She says that your authentic artistic voice shines in the delta between your own style and the style of the painter you want to emulate. 

“Insight comes, more often than not, from looking at what’s been on the table all along, in front of everybody, rather than discovering something new… That’s Dickens’ great admonition to all writers, ‘Make me see.’” 

When most people think of imitation, they think of near imitation. This is when you imitate people who do similar work to you

far imitations—transfering ideas from one domain to another—can be just as useful.

He told me that companies shouldn’t be innovative for the sake of being innovative.