View source for Surf-Sample-Manipulate: Playgiarism On The Net

At the opening of his influential essay entitled "Critifiction: Imagination As Plagiarism," novelist and critic Raymond Federman[1] says:

We are surrounded by discourses: historical, social, political, economic, medical, judicial, and of course literary.
Raymond Federman

He then goes on to suggest two things: one, that the imagination should be used as an essential tool that leads to the formulation of a discourse and, two, that the practice of plagiarism is embedded within the creative process since the writing of a discourse always implies bringing together pieces of other discourses.
This reminds me of a conversation I once had with the novelist Kathy Acker[2]. We were on a radio program together in Boulder, Colorado, and the interviewer asked her where she got her "writer's voice" from? Acker replied "What voice? There's no voice in my work: I just steal shit." 

(Source: Author's Introduction)