Quotes About Writing

He wrote: "Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.

He wrote: "Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational." The resulting prose, he wrote, "may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.

The resulting prose, he wrote, "may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.

compose memoranda with brevity and limit their length to one page or less. "It is slothful not to compress your thoughts," he said.

the queen a copy of Henry Watson Fowler's famous 1926 guide to the English language, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage.

And here we are in the closing decades of the 20th century, choking on truth. There has been so much brilliant writing, so many genial discoveries, so vast an extension and elaboration of these discoveries—yet the mind is silent as the world spins on its age-old demonic career.

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.

Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.

it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Good writing is good conversation, only more so.

If he wrote it, he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them.

I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead.

I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.

It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.

People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.