Choosing a copyrighted quote?

In Wishing for You, one of the main characters is terminally ill. The reader knows from chapter four that he will not survive. As he's telling the heroine about his illness, he says that he wants "to live hard, right up until the moment my body gives out."

The heroine reacts with empathy, and in the original manuscript, I had her speak a line from a poem by Dylan Thomas:"Do not go gentle into that good night." The hero responds with the poem's closing line.

Since that poem is still under copyright, I had to seek permission from the Dylan Thomas estate. They agreed to let me use it, but the cost surprised me—approximately a halfpenny per word for every book sold (in perpetuity.)

That works out to about 8% of the book's royalties (for 0.02% of the book's wordcount.) As perfect as the quote was, I decided against using it. While I appreciated the Estate's fast response and their willingness to work with me, I knew I had to find something with less cost.

Looking in the public domain

My editors and I brainstormed other poems that could work and avoid copyright restrictions. After a lot of discussion, we hit upon an amazing alternative: the final two lines of "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.


As much as I would've loved to use the copyrighted quote, I'm glad we kept looking. Tennyson's words were in the public domain, and I was free to use them. They were equally meaningful, perhaps even more so for my hero. And toward the end of Wishing for You, when I needed another related quote, I returned to "Ulysses"--and was able to include a longer passage:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Dame Helen Mirren recently read this poem on The Tonight Show with Stephen Colbert. I leave you with her glorious reading of the final stanza of Ulysses.