If two writers use a turn of phrase without it being the case that one is quoting the other, is one still justified in maintaining that there is a relation between their texts? Which is to say, does the accidental recurrence, a recurrence in language alone, warrant scholarly attention?
But given the impossibility of knowing what a writer is thinking of when composing his text, are not even the most well-referenced quotations no more substantive than such random recurrences? Even if the quotation binds the text that quotes to the text that is being quoted, it does not in and of itself prove that the quoting writer has read any more of that text than the sentence, phrase, or even just the word that she quotes – that there is a relation between the quoted and the quoting that is more substantial than the repetition of words.
Thoughts fallen by the wayside 