Quotes About Conciseness

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.

I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.

Words are like spices. Too many is worse than too few.

Have you ever noticed that it takes a textbook dozens of pages to say what normal people can cover fast? Example: What was the full impact of World War II? Clear-cut teenage answer: we won.

Nunca he escrito para que sea bonito o para hacer una frase bella. Lo que yo escojo es la frase justa

I don't like to spend time in endless meetings talking about stuff that isn't going to get anything done. I have meetings, but they're short, prompt and to the point.

Adverbs lead to overwriting. Try taking them out and reading your prose again to see how it sounds. Simple and less words are more powerful.

I do not wish to produce prose that draws attention to itself, rather than the world it describes.

I am not a great fan of serious, heavy writing. I prefer simple, short sentences, light on prose.

I'm obsessed with proverbs because, to me, flexing is being able to say the most with the least amount of words.

A concisão é a luxúria do pensamento.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

I say what I need to, not a whole lot more.

Why waltz with a guy for 10 rounds if you can knock him out in one?

Working as a journalist, I was always tempted to lie. I felt I could do dialogue better than the person I was interviewing. I felt I could lie better than Nixon and be more concise than some random person I was covering.

The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.

Most speakers speak ten minutes too long.

Minimalism has a connotation of being reductive, and not in the best way. 'Brevetist' is a better term. I'm trying to be as concise as possible and still getting across to the reader. When information is delivered in that way, it is very satisfying to me.

It is with words as with sunbeams, the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

It shouldn't surprise you, then, that notes written by internists read like novellas (ones in which we're paid by the word), while a colleague of mine jokes that a typical post-op surgical note reads something like "Feeling well and doing swell.

Precision of language, Jonah.

In one-act pieces there should be only rubbish - that is their strength.