I guess all artists work on inspiration from others, some do it all the time, some do it every now and then. Some know it, some people haven’t got a clue that they do it. Dylan knows it, his career is more or less built on the inspiration of traditional, American (and Irish) folk tunes. I guess most do it.
Morrissey of The Smiths does it. Smiths tracks have loads of phrases nicked or re-written from movies and litterature. You can check out a lot of the references on this page. Great reading! Morrissey has made an art of it, slightly more subtle than Andy Warhols pop art (Warhol quotes here).
One of Morrissey’s favourite places to go for great lines, was Shelagh Delaney‘s play which turned into the 1961 UK movie classic A Taste Of Honey. In fact, Morrissey’s nicked almost criminally many quotes from this movie. But as always, he nicks in beautiful ways.

The play/movie is the origin of one of the most beautiful lines in popular music – from The Smiths‘ Reel Around The Fountain. It goes: I dreamt about you last night, and I fell out of bed twice.

Flunk do some acts of thievery, too. It’s a really fun game to put in references to music, things or people we like. On For Sleepyheads Only there are loads, not so much in the lyrics, as in musical referances.

We Flunk people are, by the way, on our way to Istanbul to play a festival there tomorrow, hopefully we’ll post some pictures later.