Quotes About Conciseness

...you've heard how short, concise, and compendious he is in his Answers? Nothing is to be got out of him but Monosyllables? by Jingo, I believe he would make three Bites of a Cherry.

Simplicity is king. You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal. (in a 1984 interview with The Paris Review)

However old-fashioned and right-wing this may sound, the American genius for language lies in understatement, in saying things simply, pointedly and quickly, and in making new and clean and swift what otherwise might be ponderous, round and slow.

The fewer the words, the better you're heard!

To write good poems is the secret of brevity.

To cut and tighten sentences is the secret of mastery.

I like the idea of there being times when even words cost so much you used them sparingly. I have known a lot of old men and women who talked as if they were paying Western Union by the word.

I'm interested in the economy of words and forms: jokes, aphorisms, copywriting, advertising, that way of writing when meaning has to be squeezed into as few words as possible.

I think you often say more by saying less. And interestingly enough, I mean, Jesus really set the standard. I mean, he could say more with fewer words than anybody. Most of the parables were less than 250 words. And, boy, did he have some one-liners just packed with truth.

From a cognitive standpoint, I'm very aware that you have no room for error in a picture book. Every word counts.

Con respecto a lo negativo, el hecho de que no pueda hacer otra cosa que darle la razón me obliga a un cierto grado de laconismo.

it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book.

Yes. Theo, being a man of few words, just told me it was cool.

And another thing," he cautioned me, "don't use a lot of commas. People hate sentences with lots of commas. Keep your sentences short. Readers like short sentences.

To me, comedians are the last great storytellers because they depict their stories and create their effect with so few words. In the span of a couple minutes, stand-up comics can communicate more emotion than most novels do in hours worth of reading.

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them.

The theory that any idea that takes more than ten minutes to communicate is probably too complicated to be any good

If you can't describe your strategy in twenty minutes, simply and in plain language, you haven't got a plan.

This is where we "overtalk the ask." You begin explaining more about why there is a need for what you want without listening to their thoughts. If you don't know their thoughts, you guess what they are, and you jump in with long and lengthy explanations, qualifications, or negotiations, hoping you will convince the person to say yes.

Words are like sweets; too many of them make you sick.

Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it's blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.

But to stay on course—not just in a paragraph, but also in a larger piece as well—we need to make sure every paragraph states and develops just one idea.

Oh, I can't bother to write. If it's too long to telegraph I just let it go.