Zelda Fitzgerald Quotes

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

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

Mr. Fitzgerald, I believe that is how he spells his name, seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.

I never admit to wishing I'd written something by another author, but if my name mysteriously appeared on the title page of 'The Guns of August,' I wouldn't complain.

From what I understand about Shakespeare - which isn't a lot - there was no copyright law when he was writing. He sampled at will, and it wasn't seen as a bad thing.

Someone has said that to plagiarise from the ancients is to play the pirate beyond the Equator, but that to steal from the moderns is to pick pockets at street corners.

You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It's not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can't even remember your name.

I do not know if Alice in Wonderland was an original story-I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it-but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen story-books have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'-is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.

Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism.

I cannot say how strongly I object to people using other people's writing as research. Research is non-fiction, especially for horror, fantasy, science fiction. Do not take your research from other people's fiction. Just don't.

All writers steal. You might as well steal from the best.

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.

Since [some] American publishers pay nothing to the English authors whose stories they appropriate and publish, other American publishers can not to afford to pay American authors for writing stories.

It's so funny, I'm always stealing from Moliere, and nobody ever notices. I steal from him willy-nilly.

It's pretty rare that something I've written is close to something that's pre-existed.

I literally wear a mask. When I take it off, I'm a father. I'm a husband. I like to come home, and I like to spend time with family, and I like to travel, and I like to have a good time. And I like to be a kid every now and giggle and play with my kids.

While I am not a journalist, I have, myself, written more than one thing that has been plagiarized in the past.

The second person to write a story about a young boy and an escaped slave on the Mississippi wasn't a novelist, he was a typist.

There are major writers who have written books [based on my research]. If one looks carefully at the copyright page, you'll see my name. Writers of the stature of Mailer and even bigger. All over the world.

Yup, believe it: I was born on March 28, yet my name is April.

Authors hide their big thefts by putting small ones between quotation marks.

Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists, wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him.

When we get civilised, I believe children will go by number until they get old enough to choose their own names.

I couldn't remember my name for weeks. I'd be at the theater and hear them calling 'Miss Stanwyck, Miss Stanwyck,' and I'd think 'Where is that dame? Why doesn't she answer? By crickie, it's me!