A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.

Marquis’s aphorism treats the sequel as a creative confession: returning to a successful earlier work can signal that an artist is no longer advancing into new material but is instead reproducing a proven formula. The sting lies in the phrase “imitating yourself,” which reframes self-repetition—often marketed as “giving audiences more of what they love”—as a kind of artistic stagnation. At the same time, the line is deliberately absolute in the manner of epigrams; it invites debate about whether continuation can also be development. Its enduring appeal comes from how neatly it captures the tension between originality and commercial or popular demand.