On Good Writing

“[A] piece of literature may be more appropriately compared with a living organism than with a mechanism. As Plato says in one of his dialogues, ‘You will allow that every discourse ought to be constructed like a living organism, having its own body and head and feet; it must have middle and extremities, drawn in a manner agreeable to one another and to the whole.’ A vital order permeates a good poem, short story, or drama, and to a large extent a piece of expository art intended to be primarily ‘useful’ rather than ‘fine.’ ”  (p. 105, Writing and Thinking by Norman Foerster and J.M. Steadman, Jr., Houghton Mifflin Company, (c) 1931 Foerster and Steadman.)