Daily Inspiration Quote by Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky’s line lands like a provocation because it refuses the polite fiction of “originality” as pristine self-expression. “Imitate” is the genteel verb: it suggests reverence, apprenticeship, staying inside the lines. “Steals” is the ugly one: it implies appetite, confidence, and an artist’s right to take what works and make it answer to a new logic. He’s not endorsing laziness; he’s mocking the idea that influence is a moral failing. The subtext is almost legalistic: imitation keeps the source recognizable, a kind of tracing. Theft, in Stravinsky’s sense, is transformation so thorough the borrowed material becomes structural rather than decorative.

The context matters. Stravinsky’s career was a public argument with tradition. The early ballets drew on Russian folk materials; later he raided the past with cool precision, especially in the neoclassical period. When Pulcinella filters Pergolesi through Stravinsky’s rhythmic bite and harmonic tang, it’s “stolen” in the only way that counts: the old music is dragged into a new century and made to behave differently. That’s why the quip is also defensive. Stravinsky was often accused of pastiche, of being a brilliant arranger of other people’s ideas. He flips the charge into a standard: the great artist doesn’t deny sources; he dominates them.

It’s an ethic for modernism in one sentence: culture is a crowded room, and the real flex is not pretending you arrived alone, but leaving with something no one else could have carried.