Everything needs to start from somewhere.
The point of origin is just as likely to be random as a careful selection from the well of possibilities.
In a Penguin travel book of the 1950s, “Ten Years Under the Earth”, Norbert Casteret shared a description of the mountains and caves of his native France.
The words were curiously familiar, and eventually I realised I had read the same descriptions years earlier in the novel “Shibumi” by Trevanian. Now my question is:
Did he steal, or did he discover for himself?