Pierre Bayle Quotes

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

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.

Sometimes a line enters your head, and you're so grateful for it. You go online to check to see if anyone wrote it before you. You must have stolen it.

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

I'm a plagiarist - I always look back at other movies, and I steal, but I steal well, and I reinvent.

There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.

I won't lie, I stole a lot of ideas from Giampaolo.

Some brains are barren grounds, that will not bring seed or fruit forth, unless they are well manured with the old wit which is raked from other writers and speakers.

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

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

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 steal from every movie ever made.

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

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

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

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

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

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

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

Certainly, there are very few wholly original ideas in the world; there are usually people coming to the same conclusions or carrying out experiments, whether publicly or privately.

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

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

Plagiarism is basic to all culture