I love this passage from Nabokov’s Pale Fire. The title of Pale Fire, of course, comes from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Ironies aside, I dig the sentiment here, and would extend it to the glut of contemporary novels that rest heavily on the weight of other, better would-be precursor texts.
Biblioklept 
Are you sure he’s condemning it?
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Hard to tell—he wraps it up in so many ironies—Kinbote, the narrator/commentator is using the verb “condemn,” but Pale Fire is a Shakespeare reference—although if I recall, Kinbote doesn’t remember or realize this.
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