Art is by Nature a Transgressive Act

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To write is to invade another's space, if only to memorialize it. To write is to invite angry censure from those who don't write, or who don't write in quite the way you do, for whom you may seem a threat. Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment.

JOYCE CAROL OATES

Plagiarism

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Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.

VOLTAIRE

 

I have myself always been terrified of plagiarism—of being accused of it, that is. Every writer is a thief, though some of us are more clever than others at disguising our robberies. The reason writers are such slow readers is that we are ceaselessly searching for things we can steal and then pass off as our own: a natty bit of syntax, a seamless transition, a metaphor that jumps to its target like an arrow shot from an aluminum crossbow.

JOSEPH EPSTEIN

 

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

 

Plagiarism of style is the most nefarious of all forms of plagiarism and the shabbiest.

RAYMOND CHANDLER

 

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

WILLIAM BLAKE

 

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.

HOWARD AIKEN

The Best Moments Involve a Loss of Control

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First you look for discipline and control. You want to exercise your will, bend the language your way, bend the world your way. You want to control the flow of impulses, images, words, faces, ideas. But there’s a higher place, a secret aspiration. You want to let go. You want to lose yourself in language, become a carrier or messenger. The best moments involve a loss of control. It’s a kind of rapture, and it can happen with words and phrases fairly often—completely surprising combinations that make a higher kind of sense, that come to you out of nowhere. But rarely for extended periods, for paragraphs and pages—I think poets must have more access to this state than novelists do.

DON DeLILLO

Imagination and Inspiration

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Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.

WILLIAM BLAKE

 

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

CHARLES DICKENS

 

If writers had to wait until their precious psyches were completely serene there wouldn’t be much writing done.

WILLIAM STYRON

 

I sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the end of my pencil.

BILLY COLLINS

 

Use your imagination. Trust me, your lives are not interesting. Don’t write them down.

W.P. KINSELLA

 

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

NEIL GAIMAN

 

You go to the attic of your mind and rummage around and find something.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK

Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

RAY BRADBURY

Put Your Notes Away

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Put your notes away before you begin a draft. What you remember is probably what should be remembered; what you forget is probably what should be forgotten. No matter; you’ll have a chance to go back to your notes after the draft is completed. What is important is to achieve a draft which allows the writing to flow.

DONALD M. MURRAY

We're All Thieves

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The young people ask me about becoming a writer, and they really haven’t read, not even read bad stuff. They haven’t experienced reading as happiness, as it were. So without some knowledge of what other writers have done, it’s very hard to find your own way, I think. We’re all thieves, I suppose.

JOHN UPDIKE