Quotes About Clarity

I'm one of those people who doesn't really know what he thinks until he writes it down.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you're done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.

And this wasn't lying, not really. It was leaving out.

The thought process can never be complete without articulation.

When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story," he said. "When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

Give a man or woman back his self-respect, and in most cases-not all, but most-you also give back that person's ability to think with at least some clarity.

This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit.

If you're going into a very dark place, then you should take a bright light, and shine it on everything. If you don't want to see, why in God's name would you dare the dark at all?

Sometimes you had to know. Sometimes you had to see .

The truth is in the details.

Grammar is...the pole you grab to get your thoughts up on their feet and walking.

He found himself still with too many questions and not enough answers.

Life's simplest answers are often the easiest to overlook.

You might question a winkle - a feeling that came to you right out of the blue - but you didn't question knowing.

This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don't understand very much about what they do -- not why it works when it's good, not why it doesn't when it's bad. I figured the shorter the book, the less bullshit. Stephen King, On Writing

It was no dream she said. Dreams fade. Reality doesn't.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.'

what is the mother of carelessness if not assumption?

But this wealth of information produced little or no insight.

Clear communication between selves - the surface self and the deep self - is the enemy of self-doubt. It slays confusion.

She was satisfied with the answer God had given Moses from the burning bush when Moses had seen fit to question. Who are you? Mose asks, and God comes back from that bush just as pert as you like: I Am, Who I AM. In other words, Mose, stop beatin around this here bush and get your old ass in gear.

The key to good description begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing, the kind of writing that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary.

Hadn't somebody said that perfect paranoia and perfect awareness were the same thing?