Owning a taste
Well, stealing is such a hard word for this. I see the word as picking something that doesn't belong to you and calling it yours. In this sense, stealing would be literally downloading someone else's work and renaming the file to your name. Of course, that's neither useful nor satisfying. What it may actually mean is something along the lines of "owning a taste"—in this case, your taste.
You're free to own elements from what you personally hold close to your heart, because your own love to someone's craft is, preferably, the same love that makes you connect with your own work. It just makes sense. Why can't it be another type of connection? I assume anything but unconditional awe towards one's artistry is more or less like a platonic relationship and can fall apart at any given time, like a house of cards in a breeze.
It just doesn't make sense for you to fall in love someone's else work and to think that it truly represents how you see the world, and yet fail to handle the same type of magic in your craft. Shouldn't your stuff be even better than that one considering that you're the one yielding the same taste that made you love theirs in the first place? Should you cry for not having this otherworldly wizardry that is called talent that only the things you love seems to have? Shouldn't you be proud to own the taste your own self built?
The work of an artist that you love comes from the extra love they found for the artists they love, which themselves were enjoying artists they love and the cycle continues, all the god damn time. All comes down to the fact that no one can maintain a fountain of consistent work if they aren't enjoying themselves. Anyone can do anything, the hard part is to keep doing over, over and over again. One can restart their style and aliases many times they please, it won't help, I tried.
For me, it makes sense to not only own and wield your taste on your work, but to shamelessly own individual elements you love the most from everywhere, and assemble them in your work—like a freshly painted wall waiting desperately for a decoration: a lovely plant pot, a framed picture, an album poster—anything that makes it scream your name.
Rant ended go away