Benjamin Franklin Quotes

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.

Once you start copying other people's licks, you begin thinking they're yours. Doing that's just an easy way out.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

I think all comics borrow from each other. Only a few have an original voice, and I wasn't one of them. In the end, I couldn't figure out who to steal from, so I stopped doing it.

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

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

Inspiration is one thing. Stealing is another.

Sometimes, I think filmmakers grab too much from real life.

I didn't sit down and work out other people's material; I've never believed in that.

The last thing you want to do as a creator is take something of someone else's when you love him.

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

It is generally supposed that where there is no QUOTATION, there will be found most originality; and as people like to lay out their money according to their notions, our writers usually furnish their pages rapidly with the productions of their own soil: they run up a quickset hedge, or plant a poplar, and get trees and hedges of this fashion much faster than the former landlords procured their timber. The greater part of our writers, in consequence, have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them; and those who never quote, in return are never quoted!

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

You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling.

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

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

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.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

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

To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.

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

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

I take stuff because I'm inspired by it.