James Boswell Quotes

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.

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

Authors from whom others steal should not complain, but rejoice. Where there is no game there are no poachers.

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

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

No, generally I think influence is used as a nice word for plagiarism.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

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

I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.'

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.

Damn those who have made my remarks before me!

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

Bad writers have influences. Good writers steal.

We prefer to think that the absence of inverted commas guarantees the originality of a thought, whereas it may be merely that the utterer has forgotten its source.

The greater part of our writers have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them: and those who never quote in return are seldom quoted.

A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off

It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.

All art is theft.

You can't complain about everybody that steals your sound. You'll be fighting for years trying to figure out how to make people not steal it.

In many senses, creativity and 'plagiarism' are nearly indivisible.

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.

He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.

Therefore they who say our thoughts are not our own because they resemble the Ancients, may as well say our faces are not our own, because they are like our Fathers: And indeed it is very unreasonable, that people should expect us to be Scholars, and yet be angry to find us so.

For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrowers, among good authors is accounted Plagiarè.