if:book: jonathan lethem: the ecstasy of influence:
Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read...
no originality except the little discoloration they get from [the current writer's] mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.