Quotations about writing

Written by Bruce

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

—Mark Twain

Report writing, like motor-car driving and love-making, is one of those activities which almost every Englishman thinks he can do well without instruction. The results are of course usually abominable.

—Tom Margerison

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

—William Strunk, Jr.

I try to leave out the parts that people skip.

—Elmore Leonard

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very;” your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

—Mark Twain

I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.

—James Michener

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

—Author Unknown

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

—Isaac Asimov

I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.

—Peter De Vries

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don’t start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

—William Safire

A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.

–Baltasar Gracián

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.

—Enrique Jardiel Poncela

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you, and we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.

—Arthur Polotnik

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 it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

—George Orwell

A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order.

—Jean Luc Godard

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

—Oscar Wilde

I write only when I’m inspired. Fortunately I’m inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.

—William Faulkner

Writers must rely more on the feel of a sentence than on the dictates of a rule book.

—James J. Kilpatrick

Omit needless words.

—William Strunk, Jr.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

—Winston Churchill

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

—Robert Benchley

All significant communication begins and ends with telling the truth.

—Brad Brown

If you wish to be a writer, write.

—Epictetus