Paul Valéry also described his perception of first lines so vividly, and to my mind so accurately, that I have never forgotten it: the opening line of a poem, he said, is like finding a fruit on the ground, a piece of fallen fruit you have never seen before, and the poet's task is to create the tree from which such a fruit would fall.
— Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey
Truth is the tree trunk; style makes beautiful foliage.
— Lu Chi, The Art of Writing