All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.
To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
When you do an interview with me, you're talking to a cheap imitation of the person that I really am. There's no magic in my words, it's just me talking.
Mowgli: [mentioning Kaa] Bagheera, he's got a knot in his tail! Kaa: [imitating Mowgli] He-he-he, he's got a knot in his tail!
When I'm composing a scene for the first time, I try to imitate my character. The less critical distance the better - particularly when they're acting badly.
Yes and for two reasons: one, I couldn't find anything to imitate at the time, and secondly because what I heard on the radio didn't bear any resemblance to what I wanted to hear on the guitar.
It might be hard to remember this far back, but once upon a time, some of us hoped that public TV would develop into a smart, sophisticated, civilized alternative to commercial TV - not a cheap imitation of it.
Horace Slughorn: [shocked] Harry! Harry Potter: [imitating Slughorn and hyper from the Felix potion] Sir!
I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.
English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.
In the snobbery of science, each branch attempts to rise in the social scale by imitating the methods of the next higher science and by ignoring the methods and phenomena of the sciences beneath.
It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own.
My parents had a pub and each Sunday there was an accordionist. They have told me that when I was in my cradle, I already was imitating the gestures of the musician.
The true mission of the violin is to imitate the accents of the human voice, a noble mission that has earned for the violin the glory of being called the king of instruments
I knew that we were clicking when mimics started kidding my voice, I'll know that I'm on the way out when they stop doing their imitations.
Blessed is he who has learned to admire but not envy, to follow but not imitate, to praise but not flatter, and to lead but not manipulate.
His stories were not always new, but there was in the telling of them a special kind of magic. His voice could roll like thunder or hush down into a zepherlike whisper. He could imitate the voices of a dozen men at once; whistle so like a bird that t...
Joan Clarke: So what? I had my suspicions. I always did. But we're not like other people. We love each other in our own way, and we can still live the life together that we want. You won't be the perfect husband? I can promise you I harboured no inte...
Detective Robert Nock: Mr Turing, can I tell you a secret? Alan Turing: I'm quite good with those. Detective Robert Nock: I'm here to help you. Alan Turing: Oh, clearly! Detective Robert Nock: Can machines think? Alan Turing: Oh, so you've read some ...
The result is ... that there's no room left in the world for the weird – though plenty for crude, contemptuous, wisecracking, fun-poking imitations of it.
By Real Acting I mean “an imitation of human behavior that is both emotionally natural and mechanically precise enough as to elicit tears or laughter from humans.
