Writing, Quoting, Creating: On the Use of Other People’s Words in the Midst of Your Own

Speaking to the Shalem Institute a few years back, Richard Rohr told an amusing story about a retreat he gave to the monks of Gethsemani Abbey (where Thomas Merton lived) early in his ministry. Feeling a bit intimidated by leading a retreat where his audience was mostly older than him and represented a lifetime of monastic observance, Rohr peppered his talk with quotes from Merton — but he found that every time he invoked the famous author, the retreatants looked away uncomfortably. Finally he p...