Emulation

Immature poets imitate;

 mature poets steal;

bad poets deface what they take,

and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. 

The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn."

- T.S. Elliot

"Copying the model with out awareness would be like copying a novel to learn how to write novels."

Walter Stanchfield

"... Don't just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. you don't want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes." 

"The reason to copy your heroes and their style is so that you might somehow get a glimpse into their minds. That's what you really want - to internalize their way of looking at the world. If you just mimic the surface of some body's work without understanding where they are coming from, your work will never be anything more than a knockoff." (Kleon 36)

" The writer Wilson Mizner said if you copy from one author, it's plagiarism, but if you copy from many it's research. I once heard the cartoonist Gary Panter say, "If you have one person you're influenced by, everyone will say you're the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people everyone will say you're so original." Kleon 36)

"Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. if you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic"- Jim Jarmusch (Kleon 14)

"School is one thing. Education is another. The two don't always overlap. Whether you're in school or not, it's always your job to get yourself an education. 
You have to be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. GO deeper than anybody else - that's how you'll get ahead." (Kleon 19)

Plagerism vs practice - "plagiarism is trying to pass someone else's work off as your own. Copying is about reverse-engineering. It's like a mechanic taking apart a car to see how it works. (Kleon 33)