Read With Caution

I loved reading to such excess, particularly romances, that I spent whole days and nights at them. Sometimes the day broke while I continued to read, insomuch, that for a length of time I almost lost the habit of sleeping. I was ever eager to get to the end of the book, in hopes of finding something to satisfy a certain craving which I found within me. My thirst for reading was only increased the more I read. Books are strange inventions to destroy youth. If they caused no other hurt than the loss of precious time, is not that too much? I was not restrained, but rather encouraged to read them under this fallacious pretext, that they taught one to speak well.

Autobiography: Madame Guyon
pg 45

Imitation and Plagiarism

I believe that writing is derivative. I mean, I think good writing comes from good reading. And, I think that writers, when they sit down to write hear in their heads the rhythms of good writers they have read. Sometimes, I could even tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, but it's just experience. It's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

~Charles Kuralt