Quoting Other Writers: The Epigraph as Both Hero-Worship and Laziness

Ever wonder what those quotes you see at the start of some books, or at the start of some chapters, are called?

No? Clearly, some of us are nerdier than others.

They are called epigraphs, and their usage inspires both devotion and revulsion.

“Tell your authors to stay way from them!” one of my colleagues in independent publishing announced recently. “Stop it with the quotes!”

However, Thomas Swick on LitHub is a fan: “The epigraph page is like a ceremonial gate ushering us into the realm of the author with his or her beloved quotation … that perfectly reflects, or distills, the essence of what follows.”

To be fair to my colleague, she’d worked with a number of authors who used epigraphs with wild abandon. And she wasn’t the only one in my circle with this experience. In an editor group chat I participated in, another editor said, “This author was using three different quotes at the start of each chapter!”

This was a new one for me. “From different sources?” I asked.

“No. All from the same source. And some of them are paragraphs long!”

Most of the time, epigraphs come as singular events: one at the start of the book, sometimes one to start each chapter. But lest you think three is a lot (and I sure did), after poking around on the internet, I have discovered that Moby Dick has EIGHTY EPIGRAPHS. You are not misreading that. Please gorge on more Herman Melville weirdness here.

Evidently, some people love the epigraph. But can we have too much of a good thing?

The short answer: yes, no, and maybe so. Epigraphs can be amazing tools, and terrible crutches. And they can also be problematic in ways writers don’t often foresee while they are in their crazed… I mean, creative, state. So should you use (m)any epigraph(s)? And if so, what should you keep in mind?

Why epigraph: what the advocates say

Writers give lots of reasons for using epigraphs, but let’s be honest. Most of the time, they simply adore that writer, that work, or that specific quote. They’ve been looking for opportunities to foist their adoration on the world, much like fans of niche music.

However, good writers also figure out that they can use an epigraph to set a mood and connect with their book’s theme. In my view, this is the most defensible and best way to use an epigraph. Consider these examples:

• Mario Puzo’s The Godfather begins with a quotation by Balzac: “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
• Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian uses W.B. Yeats’s “There is another world, but it is in this one.” In Alexie’s story, Junior encounters a very different world when he leaves the Spokane Indian reservation school to attend the white school in a neighboring town, where the only other Indian is the mascot.
• JRR Tolkien wrote the epigraph for The Fellowship of the Rings himself: a piece of lore from Middle Earth, the world where the story takes place. It includes the famous lines, “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, / One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them”.
• One of two epigraphs in Craig Pittman’s popular history, Oh, Florida! How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country, reads: “Florida is a study in abnormal psychology, useful in signaling the … hidden derangements of the national mood.”

You get the idea.

Beyond setting a mood, you’re giving the reader a hint of your own sensibilities, and possibly tying your work into a literary tradition. There’s nothing wrong with this, and both uses can be delightful. But be careful of why you have decided to use epigraphs, because…

Bad epigraph: on crutches and showing off

Heavy use of epigraphs can be a sign that a writer isn’t comfortable with using their own voice.

Quoting someone else is a sign of respect. You acknowledge that this voice should be heard, and you are using your own work to give them a boost. This is all well and good, until the point at which you do so because you’re uncomfortable claiming your own experience and expertise.

Are you elevating an epigraph out of appreciation, or leaning on it because you believe your words are second best?

Consider the work the epigraph is doing for you. Do you really need someone else’s words to do that work? Be careful of giving over space instead of declaring it for your own.

Also, don’t be lazy. Yes, isn’t it handy that someone else has thought about your subject or your type of story before? But if you want to add anything to the literary canon or to the discussion, you actually need to, well, add something.

And lastly, don’t use epigraphs to show off how smart you are. Readers can smell that from a mile off, and they don’t like it.

When you use an epigraph, you claim familiarity with the work and/or the writer you are quoting. Talking about what we love to read shows a type of affection, but we can also be pretentious about what we read. Aside from being a turnoff in and of itself, waving around your literary credentials distracts from your work. Anything that distracts from the work is problematic.

Epigraphs always work best when they are in conversation with the work—not with the cocktail party glitterati.

What about copyright problems?

Finally, there is the matter of copyright. In case you were wondering, this area of law is neither black nor white, but a pleasant shade of gray. If you’ve ever seen information stating that it’s OK to use a quote as long as it’s no longer than X number of words/lines, you’ve been sold a bill of goods. There are so many asterisks to that statement.

Are you likely to run into a lot of copyright issues when using epigraphs? In my experience* (note the asterisk!), it’s unlikely. But there are notable exceptions, such as:

• Song lyrics
• Poetry
• Anything Disney
• the Arthur Conan Doyle estate (Sherlock Holmes)

Good protocol when quoting anyone applies to epigraphs as well: ask for permission (and only use the epigraph with permission), and give credit.

Bottom Line

Epigraphs are a fun way to pay literary homage while setting a mood and playing with theme. But they can be problematic if you use them as a crutch, to show off, or if you use too many of them. Remember what I said about distractions. I’d argue that’s what Melville’s eighty epigraphs for Moby Dick are!

Above all, write well so that the next generation of writers is quoting you, not someone else you quote.

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* I am not a copyright attorney, and in no way does this constitute legal advice.

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