Quoting Quotes

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Ever day someone somewhere in the world is quoting me.”
― Ken Poirot

“You get so worked up and flowery! You sound as if you were quoting something all the time!”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“A transcription doesn’t so much repeat words as contextualize and historicize them, uniting them with the time, place, and source of their utterance. A transcript reproduces the words it records; it does not use them. Quoting is an attitude and practice, central to aesthetic and literary experiences as different from each other as the sublime and camp.”
― William Flesch

“Werewolves and silver bullets!” Shakespeare coughed a quick laugh and shook his head. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
― Michael Scott, The Sorceress

“I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“Gdy przepisujemy i cytujemy, budujemy gmach wiedzy i rozmnażamy ją jak moje warzywa czy jabłonki. Przepisywanie jest jak szczepienie drzewa; cytowanie – jak wysiewanie nasion.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Księgi Jakubowe

“There are a lot of people who ask what's the point, poring over words that were written twenty, fifty, two hundred years ago. And doing it again and again, after there's already been so much written on the subject. But ultimately I think it's about learning to pay attention. Learning to examine something closely, and ask questions, and place it in different frameworks to see how it might change. As a culture, we are what we write about, and examining those texts can teach us a lot about how we see the world.”
― Alicia Thompson, Love in the Time of Serial Killers