Quotes About Clarity

Worry is like racing the engine of an automobile without letting in the clutch.

A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.

There should be two main objectives in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader's attention or check his habitual pace of reading - he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.

There is an accuracy that defeats itself by the overemphasis of details. I often say that one must permit oneself, and quite advisedly and deliberately, a certain margin of misstatement.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

Get black on white.

The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.

There is but one art, to omit.

I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.

It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as if it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Whatever we conceive well we express clearly.

There is no such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

Only in the early morning light of day, and of life, can we see the world without its shadows. Truth requires new beginnings.

There's a dividing line but really it divides nothing.

You can't fall off the floor.

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.

A straight stick looks crooked under water.

I have neither the time nor the crayons to explain this to you.