John Dryden Quotes

There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

When it comes to other people's writing, my older influences are more powerful than more recent ones, partially because I'm now more worried that I'll suddenly accidentally steal something from another writer.

I am suspicious of writers who say their work is original and influenced by nobody. If it is, it is probably uninteresting. The biggest source of novels is other novels.

When you snatch little pieces of other people's lives and try to palm them off as your own, that's more disgusting than anything. Robin Williams is a huge thief. Denis Leary is a huge thief. His whole stand-up career is based on Bill Hicks, a brilliant guy who died years ago.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

I don't steal stories. If I'm a plagiarist, so is Hitchcock. And Tolkien. And Shakespeare.

I take stuff because I'm inspired by it.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

I steal from every movie ever made.

The trouble is, once you say something about a source, then you've pegged it down, and so now I'm reluctant to say anything. If I say I developed 50 different shapes from Mississippian tumuli, that doesn't mean they're copies of tumuli - I'm not ripping off those shapes.

I'm a big fan of Nora Ephron, who believed everything is copy, and I agree.

I've seen a lot of people stealing from what I do. Some people show love and say thank you and tell me how I was an inspired for them.

Between last night and this morning, I've been getting a lot of messages from overseas fans along the lines of 'There's an American comic ripping off Bleach!' I'm not that good at English, but I looked at the site and it seems it's a comic by Nick Simmons, the son of Gene Simmons. To be honest, I'm more bothered by the fact that Gene Simmons' son is a comic artist than whether or not it's a rip-off.

As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may wore properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame.

Genius Borrows nobly.

Most authors steal their works, or buy.

Delsarte tells me that Mozart stole outrageously from Galuppi, in the same way, I suppose, that Molière stole from anybody anywhere, if he found something work taking. I said that what was Mozart had not been stolen from Galuppi, or from anyone else for that matter.

Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

I'm usually the last to see my influence in other people's work. People give me stuff and say "Oh look, this guy's ripping you off," and I'm like "What do you mean?" Often I see the people that I've ripped off filtered into my own work. In other people's work, I can only see specific, tiny little instances of inflections stolen from another artist.

A big talent steals, a small talent borrows.

Everything all of us do is stolen from somebody.

I am now to offer some thoughts upon that sameness or familiarity which we frequently find between passages in different authors without quotation. This may be one of three things either what is called Plagiarism, or Imitation, or Coincidence.

They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.

When people ask me my influences and I'm like, "nobody" they're like, "there has to be somebody." People seem to think you have to have an influence.