Does anyone know much about borrowing little exerts from artists and philosophers. For example I found a nice couplet from Plato's Republic that would be a nice intro into a story. Obviously the guy has been dead for a while now but what are legality issues regarding such a thing. I know that other writers like to quote song lyrics at the start of a chapter. Is their a financial implication involved?
I'm truly hoping to borrow from John Milton and Victor Hugo. I don't think there are any issues with quoting from so far back, other than the odd critic suggesting that we should use our own words and not the words of others. But quotes were truly relevant to my characters situation and therefore necessary.
I did originally have a couple of brand names and two songs in my book as well. I think it was listening to an extract of a James Bond novel in which a Ronson lighter is mentioned that convinced me I could use brands, but they didn't seem important enough to keep, although I will definitely ask about one of them in the professional editing stages because it is a brand used so generically, despite there being other products on the market.
One of the songs is so famous, I decided I could probably describe it in very few words and most would guess correctly which song it was. That worked for the first book, but the same song gets mentioned in the third book and I haven't thought of a way around that yet. I probably will, though, as there is no specific need for the song in question.
The thing I'm going to have the biggest problem with is the celebrities mentioned in the fifth book. I could rewrite them as fictional, but it would be so much more fun if I didn't have to! And there is the knotty issue of how I write a fictional British Prince! Lol.
I used a quote from the Dalai Lama of just thirty-five words for the prologue of my novel It encapsulated the mood, emotion and the wisdom of the arc of the story.
I have quotations at the start of the three major sections in my story. They are fishing quotations from Whittaker's Almanack. If the day comes they become a problem, they can go then.