Susan Sontag Quotes

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

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

When a writer tries to copy another writer, it's doomed to fail.

Whatever is well said by another, is mine.

I don't think anybody came into the movie business to be unoriginal and plagiarising and not having an original idea in their brain.

I don't read much of what I write because I worry about unintentionally borrowing something.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don't know in your own soul.

If you copy then it is not self-expression.

I take stuff because I'm inspired by it.

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.

An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.

Originality is the art of concealing your source.

I think people who sample are cheating. It is like people who do collages. Use all of your own stuff.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

If you do come up with a new idea, in 4 seconds it will belong to somebody else.

If you can't plagiarise yourself, who can you plagiarise?

I don't want nobody to ever say, 'I coulda done that beat' or 'I know where you got that from.'

Never steal jokes.

A major focus of 'Reality Hunger' is appropriation and plagiarism and what these terms mean. I can hardly treat the topic deeply without engaging in it. That would be like writing a book about lying and not being permitted to lie in it.

There's a difference between hiring writers and stealing jokes.