War & Peace Quote by Joe Grant

“Everything has been said in print” lands like a cold splash of realism: originality is a myth if you define it as virgin territory. Joe Grant, a Disney-era artist who spent decades in a studio built on adaptation, iteration, and relentless craft, isn’t mourning that fact; he’s weaponizing it. The line smuggles in a liberating premise: if every idea has antecedents, then the anxiety of being first is a distraction from the only contest that matters.

Calling it “a battle of giants” reframes culture as an ongoing brawl among masterpieces, not a polite salon of clever takes. It’s Grant admitting the pressure of working in a tradition where the benchmark isn’t “good enough” but “will it stand next to the greats?” The giants aren’t just other artists; they’re the accumulated weight of books, paintings, films, and myths already in the room before you pick up a pencil.

Then comes the most Disney, and most subversive, move: “none of your business.” That’s not rudeness; it’s a boundary. Walt Disney’s implied advice rejects the modern compulsion to litigate influence, to pre-defend your work against accusations of derivation, to explain yourself into safety. Grant is arguing for a kind of disciplined privacy: stop auditing the genealogy of your ideas and return to the workbench.

The intent is practical and moral at once: create anyway, create harder, and measure yourself by execution, not provenance. In an era of hot takes and plagiarism hunts, it’s a bracing reminder that craft is the only defensible originality.