Art & Creativity Quote by Robertson Davies

Originality, Davies suggests, isn’t a fireworks display of weirdness; it’s the slow, stubborn labor of self-recognition on the page. The line neatly punctures the romantic myth that great writing springs from exotic technique or grand invention. Instead, he frames originality as the residue of specificity: the cadences you can’t help but fall into, the moral obsessions you keep circling, the kinds of jokes you make when you’re not trying. “Write like himself” sounds almost quaint, but the subtext is brutal. Most writers spend years learning to sound like someone else because imitation is socially rewarded: it signals literacy, taste, belonging. Voice, by contrast, risks exposure. It announces what you find interesting, what you fear is trivial, what you’re secretly angry about.

Davies, a mid-century Canadian novelist often read as both erudite and slyly comic, is also taking a swipe at the marketplace’s obsession with novelty. The industry sells “original” as a brand identity, yet nudges writers toward legible types: the gritty realist, the lyrical minimalist, the hot-take satirist. In that environment, “himself” becomes less a natural state than an achievement you earn by resisting fashion and by tolerating the awkward early drafts where your real sensibility peeks out unflatteringly.

The sentence’s second half is the trapdoor: if being yourself were easy, everyone would do it. What makes it difficult isn’t lack of talent; it’s the pressure to perform a version of yourself that others will recognize and approve. Davies argues that the hardest authenticity is not personal honesty in life, but stylistic honesty under scrutiny.