sloppy seconds

The New York Times, April 25, 2006:
HARVARD NOVELIST SAYS COPYING WAS UNINTENTIONAL
Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore accused of plagiarizing parts of her recently published chick-lit novel, acknowledged yesterday that she had borrowed language from another writer's books, but called the copying "unintentional and unconscious."

Here are some other suspect passages from How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life:

"The three rules of the Tipping Point — the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, the Power of Context — offer a way of making sense of epidemics. They provide Opal Metha with direction for how to go about reaching a Tipping Point. The balance of her application essay will take these ideas and apply them to other puzzling situations and epidemics from the world around her."

"The first thing you'll probably want to know, if you really want to hear about it, is where she was born and what her lousy high school was like, and how her parents were occupied and all before she got into Harvard, and all that Bridget Jones kind of crap, but she doesn't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

"The college application process breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good students and the very gentle students and the very brave students impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no early admission."

"Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Opal Metha thinks, "I have come to Harvard: a fur piece. All the way to Alabama a-driving. A fur piece.'"

"She was so deeply imbedded in her consciousness that for the first year of Harvard, Opal seems to have believed that each of her professors was her mother in disguise."

"In the beginning when Opal created her application essay, the application was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the packet, while a wind from the air conditioner swept over the face of the Poland Spring waters. Then Opal said "Let there be an essay"; and there was an essay. And Opal saw that the essay was good; and Harvard's admissions office separated the good essays from the bad. Harvard admitted the good essays, and the bad they rejected that Night. And there were rejects and there were students, the first years."