The Writer As Technician

QUOTATION: Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention.

The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.

ATTRIBUTION: John Dos Passos (1896-1970), U.S. novelist, poet, playwright, painter. "The Writer As Technician," International Publishers (1935), ed. Henry Hart.