Anatole France frankly advised, "When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it." Yes, indeed, but do more. Copy many well-said things. Pierce them together. Assimilate them. Make the process of reading… — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
“Like a delicatessen owner who sells rancid meat and then blames his business failure on the vulgarization of customer taste, humanities professors account for… — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
A single gnomic line can come to resonate with centuries of subsequent wisdom. — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been… — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
Reframing an extract as a quotation constitutes a kind of coauthorship. With no change in wording, the cited passage becomes different. I imagine that… — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
The attribution of a speaker is in fact a part of the quotation. Some statements simply are better if a certain famous person said… — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
Unless created as freestanding works, quotations resemble "found" art. They are analogous, say, to a piece of driftwood identified as formally interesting enough to… — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
We sometimes think of quotations as extracts from larger texts, but some quotations originated complete unto themselves. — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
Not everything that can be extracted appears in anthologies of quotations, in commonplace books, or on the back of Celestial Seasonings boxes. Only certain… — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
Anatole France frankly advised, "When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it." Yes, indeed, but… — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
I wonder if "an" ever occurs before "haughty" except in a quotation, or whether you can make anything sound like a quotation by adding… — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
Some lines are born quotations, some are made quotations, and some have "quotation" thrust upon them. — Gary Saul Morson Copy Share Image
