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As a child, after reading wonderful books for kids by CS Lewis, E. Nesbit, Susan Cooper, L. Frank Baum, etc., I would come up with some wonderful ideas for new books, then get disgruntled when other authors would publish stories that sounded just like mine. I didn't want to admit back then that the same fodder in like minds would produce similar results.

So, that probably wasn't idea-stealing -- but also, have you ever said anything witty or surprising to your friend, and then later, the friend used it in conversation later as if it were her own idea? I hate it when others take your bon mots! Especially when it's you and the friend in a larger group. It makes the friend look better, and you look like just the one who agrees with her.

I've had a comic-book spoof idea for years in which the main character is "Squirrel Man". I just found out about a 'toon called Squirrel Boy now. I have no idea what it is about, but they stole my super-squirrel idea is all I know.

I've actually had to use people to translate my ideas most of my life. I'm too quiet to say things myself, so as long as I have got an extremely extroverted friend nearby people can hear my ideas.

Like MTV remaking Rocky Horror Picture Show as a made-for-TV-movie. It made money for someone else once, why shouldn't MTV bastardize it?

I think that there are too many used up ideas clogging up our own idea-making brain space that we can't come up with anything new. Sometimes, I think I have a great new idea, but then I realize the only reason I thought of it so easily is because I've heard it before.