Norm MacDonald Quotes

Originality is a return to the origin.

I never wanted the temptation to imitate or emulate something that had been done beforehand.

Originality implies a return to the origins, original is returning to the simplicity of the first solutions.

You mustn't expect me to repeat myself. My past doesn't interest me. I would rather copy others than copy myself. In that way I should at least be giving them something new. I love discovering things.

Originality is only variation.

What the world calls originality is only an unaccustomed method of tickling it.

I like embracing kind of normal forms but am always trying to approach them as if no one's ever done that before. As if I'm literally the first person to ever write a book.

Originality is the only thing that counts. But the originator uses material and ideas that occur round him and pass through him. And out of his experience comes the original creation.

Agents and publishers are always looking for something 'different,' a fresh viewpoint and a new voice, not just re-hashed versions of stuff that's gone before.

Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.

I dont ever want to do anything mediocre. I hear the music in the charts and I dont mean to be rude, but those people have no soul. Learning from music is like eating a meal - you have to pace yourself. You cant take everything from it all at once. I want to be different, definitely. Im not a one trick pony. Im at least a five-trick pony.

Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.

To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.

You have to be doing something very different from what everybody else is doing, hopefully different from what's ever been done before - something that nobody's thought of yet.

Imitation always stinks. When I take photos, I don't go back. I don't look at the past. I'm always original.

I never feel I repeat myself. I really go out of my way to amuse myself. I would be bored stiff. If I feel the déjavu when I'm doing something, I stop and rethink and rework it.

Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.

Originality is also very important to a writer. And all of the writers I've mentioned, of course, are original, but it's important to me that every book that I do be really a completely fresh and new look at the world. And of course, that makes it frightening to start a new book because you can't really depend upon what you've done with previous books.

You've got to concentrate on the business of entertaining and writing songs. Always think different from the next person. Don't ever do a song as you heard somebody else do it.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

There are no original ideas. There are only original people.

Don't just rehash what came before. Find new things to do with it, in your unique voice.

I have to believe everything I write is brand new and I'm writing in this way about these people in a completely new situation for the very first time.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I just wanted to play tennis. I started because I wanted to pick up another sport and then as I was slowly getting better I wanted to see how far I can go but I always wanted to be myself. I wanted to be original. I didn't want to copy anybody's style.