William Mizner...

"When you take stuff from one writer, it's plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers, it's research."

Robert Burton...

"They lard

their lean books

with the fat

of others' works."

Ralph Waldo Emerson...

"All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients."

Archibald MacLeish...

"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."

Jack Smith...

"I'd rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer."

Josh Billings...

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

Herman Melville...

"But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."