From Stolen Words, by Thomas Mallon:

[This scholarly but lively, witty work about plagiarism, and how it became the modern concept we recognize over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, sits on my imaginary shelf next to Marginalia by H. J. Jackson (who is cited in this book, because her buddy Coleridge figures heavily not only in the history of marginalia but also in the history of plagiarism).]

***

To some extent every writer's desk top is like a Ouija board, his pen pushed across it by whatever literary ghost he's just entertained.

***

It's...common for the novelist, particularly the young one, to create his characters out of himself. What's odd, and what may have been true in Sterne's middle-aged case, is taking the opportunity to make oneself out of one's characters.

***

Originality...set itself down as a cardinal literary virtue sometime in the middle of the eighteenth century and has never since gotten up.

***

[Coleridge] would likely have denied that what he was really giving...was not so much an account of what Sterne's brain went through when musing upon female anatomy as of what his own underwent in the presence of German metaphysics.

***

One can barely conduct a study of plagiarism amid the deafening sound of literary pots roaring at literary kettles.

***

Coleridge: "I regard truth as a divine ventriloquist."

***

Charles Reade: "A man's life is like those geographical fragments children learn 'the contiguous countries' by. The pieces are a puzzle; but put them together carefully, and lo! they are a map."

***

The preface to A Simpleton has Reade blustering: "All fiction, worth a button, is founded on facts.... I rarely write a novel without milking about two hundred heterogeneous cows into my pail."

Most novelists perform the same chore less loudly on a smaller herd.

***

Take a writer not quite so beyond criticism, and we tend, upon spotting historical lumps in the narrative gravy, to object.

***

By mid-March things were sufficiently complicated for an academic to step in.

***

The four volumes of Uber Land und Meer that were brought up from the lower depths of the New York Public Library together weigh more than an IBM Selectric typewriter and are so covered with dust that you have to imagine the Bismarckian Hausfrauen who subscribed to the unbound originals sternly clucking at their current untidiness.

From Burglars in Bucks, by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole:

***

[Six dots appear in the middle of a letter one character is writing to another.]

.      .      .      .      .      .

Those dots are Jerry [he writes], coming in.

***

"I may accept a poltergeist which breaks crockery, and even, at a pinch, one which doubles up keys in people's pockets, but I will emphatically not accept one which manufactures imitation keys, bends them up so that there is no risk of any one's trying to use them, and substitutes them for the real ones."

***

[Writes Everard] "She clutched me and sobbed, 'Oh, Everard!' any number of times; but when I asked what was the matter she only Oh Evararded again."

***

"'Racing touts,' said Coulson, ' 'ud be a pretty name for them.' He didn't tell me what an ugly one would have been; but by the shape of his face I could guess."

***

Bonus: An offstage character called Lady Doppelganger.

From The Case of the Careless Cupid, by ESG:

***

Della Street regarded the lawyer with wide-eyed admiration. "You clever so-and-so of a such-and-such!" she said.

***

From The Case of the Fabulous Fake, by ESG:

***

"You know Gertie, she's an incurable romantic. Give her a button and she'll sew a vest on it every time, and sometimes I think she even uses an imaginary button."

From Begin Again, by Ursula Orange:

[Anthropomorphized Clocks dept.]

Jane's alarm clock went off with such energy that it whirred itself right over the edge of the painted chest-of-drawers and clattered on to the floor. The shrill metallic ringing changed to a croaking rasp. Then silence. The clock lay on its back with its ugly moon face staring at the ceiling, ticking in an offensive and deliberate manner. Beyond pulling the bed-clothes of the divan bed a little further over her head Jane took absolutely no notice. The clock, its three tin legs sticking out sharply, continued to tick. It had the sulky and obstinate air of one who performs a duty, however unpleasant. with extreme thoroughness.

From The "Looking-Glass" Murders, by Douglas G. Browne:

[That's "Looking-Glass" as in "Through the": the setting involves an amateur theatrical production of Lewis Carroll.]

***

"As a conscientious artist, I couldn't give the Jabberwock pockets."

***

It was, in short, Messrs. So-and-so's idea of what a study should be.

***

"What an extraordinary creature she must be!"

"She is!" said the Major with conviction. "I have seen her with the lid off, so to speak."

***

[He] drew up before the offices of Messrs. Trimble, Bachelor, Popple & Shelfe, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths. Enough jokes have been made about the nomenclature of law firms. It will suffice that no one on the premises appeared to answer to any of the names engraved on the plate outside. [Fair enough! (:v>]

***

From The Case of the Reluctant Model, by ESG:

***

[This, of course, is just the standard dig at modern art...but I love the way Della Street phrases it.]

“I wonder if you’ve hung it upside down.”

“It’s all upside down if you ask me.”

***

Rankin settled himself in the client’s chair with the stiffness of a carpenter’s rule being folded up.

From The Case of the Bigamous Spouse:

***

“Can you,” she asked, “tell me the principle on which the telephone works, and how a voice can be transferred into electrical vibrations sent over a wire and then those vibrations again turned back into audible sounds so that the voice seems to come through the receiver?”

“Certainly,” Mason said. “You simply drop a dime in the slot indicated for such purpose.”

“Can you,” Della Street asked, “tell me why it is that it is noon in New York when it is only nine o’clock in Los Angeles?”

“Of course,” Mason said. “The people in New York get up three hours earlier.”

From The Case of the Duplicate Daughter, by Erle Stanley Gardner:

***

“Somehow you’re not the type that one associates with afternoons of dillydallying.”

“I was neither dillying nor dallying,” Mason said.

***

"I met a very pompous young man who takes himself very, very seriously indeed; a man who is saturated with college economics, with the analysis of financial trends, who would exude stock-market quotations as a wrestler would exude perspiration."

***

“They could perhaps remove evidence or think things over a little bit, or sometimes they might even slip out of the side exit door and then their secretary would be able to say quite truthfully that the man I wanted to see was gone and she didn’t know just where he could be located.

“I think I’ve got my singulars and plurals all mixed up there somehow, Mason, but I’m quite certain you get the idea.”

From A Condensed Interminable Novel, by Stephen Leacock:

***

During all this time women were calling to him. He knew

  and came to be friends with—

     Margaret Jones,

        Elizabeth Smith,

           Arabella Thompson,

              Jane Williams,

                 Maud Taylor.

 

And he also got to know pretty well,

  Louise Quelquechose,

     Antoinette Alphabetic,

        Estelle Etcetera.

From The Old Firm, by Joan Butler:

***

"Very nicely put!" said Guinevere. "I must make a note of that for my new book."

Elizabeth had pinched these lofty sentiments, almost word for word, from one of Guinevere's novels, but she hesitated to confess the theft.

***

"A loving heart never errs," Guinevere replied gently. "Even when it's dancing like a daffodil in the breeze," she added as a footnote.

Elizabeth, whose heart, far from dancing like a daffodil in the breeze, had sunk heavily until its descent was arrested by her suspender-belt, greeted this beautiful sentiment with a sniff.

***

She saw Sir Archibald as through a mist--which was perhaps the best way to see him.

***

Peake, the butler, warned by some sixth or seventh sense of the master's arrival, had appeared in the doorway.

***

"Did you follow me here?"

"Certainly not! I don't know where you get your ideas, but you should try some other place."

***

[Wodehouse Emulation dept.]

"You wouldn't believe how glad I am you're not an otter."

"Or a water-vole," Miss Laughton suggested.

"Or, as you say, a water-vole."

***

An extraordinary spectacle met his gaze, and one which made him raise his eyebrows to the limit of their travel.

***

She went red and white by turns, and modestly dropped her gaze to the floor, or possibly even lower.

***

From The Black Iris, by Constance and Gwenyth Little:

***

"You look silly with a hat on--you know it?" Mrs. Balron observed.

"Naturally. Since I feel silly, and am silly."

[Good answer!]

***

[Again with metaphorial bandboxes! Not the same author as before, either.]

This lousy little bandbox of a house was full of odd noises.

[And a little more research shows that calling a small building a bandbox is not unique, either.]

***

[And meanwhile in the Eyewear Business dept....]

He did not bother with the kitchen since he knew that his aunts considered it an apartment to be viewed through a lorgnette--if at all.

***

"People as a whole," said Mrs. Balron, "are entirely too touchy."

From The View from the Sixties, by George Oppenheimer:

***

For a long time [Harpo Marx] called me Benson. It was no special distinction; he called everybody whose name he could not remember by this label. Nights in his dressing room... you could hear him introduce his hordes of visitors to one another as Mr. or Miss or Mrs. Benson.

[Tangent: When I read Groucho and Me as a kid, one of my favorite details was how Groucho repeatedly used "Delaney" as the name of minor personages whose real names didn't matter or which he couldn't recall or didn't want to reveal or whatever.]

***

Also assigned to the screenplay... were Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin.... Goldwyn never referred to them by name, but only as "de boys." This created considerable confusion since William Du Bois was also working for Goldwyn.... Time and again Goldwyn would buzz me on the dictagraph, order me to bring in de boys, and hastily buzz off, leaving me to figure out whether he wanted William or Sheekman and Perrin. Inevitably I guessed wrong, whereupon Goldwyn would scream at me, "I said de boys, not Du Bois" or vice versa.

***

"Damn it," I said irascibly after losing another rubber, "let's have some light. I can't see my nose in front of my face."

"That isn't where it is," said Charlie [Lederer].

***

[Doing the Math]

There was a scene in which [Garbo] and Douglas had to do a tango. Robert Alton, the choreographer, was showing her the steps and I was required to tango along with them, injecting and shortening the dialogue lines to the rhythm of the dance.... In this case it took three to tango.

***

One of the theaters... was a loft on the second floor of an ancient building on Martha's Vineyard. Directly underneath it was a merry-go-round with a calliope. The love scenes became even more unconvincing when accompanied by "East Side, West Side" or "Anchors Aweigh."

***

"I like my job. I'm happy in New York."

He shook his head sadly. "Boy," he said incredulously and, lest I might have misunderstood him, he repeated, "Boy."

***