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. . . see "COMMUNICATION" for related links A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. --Margaret Atwood (1939 ) Canadian novelist and poet. Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can. --Jane Austen (17751817) English writer. _Mansfield Park_ [1814] Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. _Essays_, "Of Studies" The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any --Russell Baker (1925 ) American journalist and columnist. _Growing Up_ [1982] Ch. 9 It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time. --Tallulah Bankhead (19031968) American actress. All writers are thieves; theft is a necessary tool of the trade. --Nina Bawden (1925 ) British writer of children's books. _Mothers: Reflections by Daughters_ [1995] Very often I must wait weeks and weeks for what you call "inspiration." In the meantime I must sit with my quill pen poised in air over a foolscap, in case the divine spark should come like a lightning bolt and knock me off my chair onto my head. --Robert Benchley (18891945) American humorist and newspaper columnist. _How I Create_ I walked around for a few hours. Around one-thirty it started raining lightly. Almost immediately the umbrella sellers turned up on the streetcorners. You'd have thought they had existed previously in spore form, springing miraculously to life when a drop of water touched them. --Lawrence Block (1938 ) American crime writer. _Out on the Cutting Edge_ - Of every four words I write, I strike out three. --Nicolas Boileau-Desprιaux (16361711) French critic and poet. Happy who in his verse can gently steer From grave to light, from pleasant to severe. --Nicolas Boileau-Desprιaux (16361711) French critic and poet. _L'art poιtique_ [1674], canto I - A piece of writing was shown not long ago to an illustrious personage who smiled and said: 'These words must be greatly astonished to find themselve together, for assuredly they had never met before.' --Dominique Bouhours (16321702) French Jesuit grammarian. [1671] , quoted in Jacques Barzun, _From Dawn to Decadence_ [2000]. When I wrote that only God and I knew what I meant. Now only God knows. --Robert Browning (18121889) English poet. Answering a question from a Robert Browning Club member. - I occasionally find myself sitting, staring at the blank screen of my word processor the creative juices dried like cornstalks in a winter field. Often, when faced with this horrible thing called "writer's block" I go to my bookcase. The presence of greatness stimulates creativity. I read the opening sentences of Steinbeck's The Pearl, Catherine Marshall's A Man Called Peter or Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, I then imitate until my pump is primed. Imitation is at least 50 percent of the creative process. The growing child learns by imitating. --Jamie Buckingham (19321992) American Christian pastor, author, and columnist. _Charisma and Christian Life_ [January 1990], "Creativity" - To write well is to think well, to feel well, and to render well; it is to possess at once intellect, soul, and taste. --George Louis Leclerc Buffon, Comte de (17071788) French naturalist. I've also grown weary of reading about clouds in a book. Doesn't this piss you off? You're reading a nice story, and suddenly the writer has to stop and describe the clouds. Who cares? I'll bet you anything I can write a decent novel, with a good, entertaining story, and never once mention the clouds. Really! Every book you read, if there's an outdoor scene, an open window, or even a door slightly ajar, the writer has to say, "As Bo and Velma walking along the shore, the clouds hung ponderously on the horizon like steel-gray, loosely formed gorilla turds." I'm not interested. Skip the clouds and get to the fu*king. The only story I know of where clouds were important was Noah's Ark. --George Carlin (1937 ) American stand-up comedian and author. _Brain Droppings_ Such epithets, like pepper, Give zest to what you write; And if you strew them sparely, They whet the appetite: But if you lay them on too thick, You spoil the matter quite! --Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (18321898) English writer and logician. "Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur" No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this sell-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind. --Miguel de Cervantes (15471616) Spanish novelist. - Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder. --Raymond Chandler (18881959) American writer of detective fiction. The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off. --Raymond Chandler (18881959) American writer of detective fiction. - He who writes nothing silly writes nothing great. --Anton Chekhov (18601904) Russian dramatist and short-story wrriter. Punctuation is the sound of your voice on paper. --Joseph Collignan, _The Last Rhetoric_ [1974] That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. Preface to _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words;Addressed to Those Who Think_ [1820]. If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything. --Confucius (551479 B.C.) K'ung Ch'iu, Chinese philosopher. Coming across a footnote is like going downstairs to answer the doorbell while making love. --Noλl Coward (18991973) English playwright, actor, and composer. Quoted in Anthony Grafton _The Footnote: A Curious History_ [1999]. I like long and unusual words, and anybody who does not share my tastes is not compelled to read me. Policemen and politicians are under some obligation to make themselves comprehensible to the intellectually stunted, but not I. Let my prose be tenebrous and rebarbative; let my pennyworth of thought be muffled in gorgeous habilements; lovers of Basic English will look to me in vain. --Robertson Davies (19131995) Canadian author and playwright. _Marchbanks' Garland_ - Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory. --Denis Diderot (17131784) French writer and philosopher. Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race. --Denis Diderot (17131784) French writer and philosopher. - I have now for more than a year, I believe, ceased to write in my journal, in which I formerly wrote almost daily. I see few intellectual persons, and even those to no purpose, and sometimes believe that I have no new thoughts, and that my life is quite at an end. But the magnet that lies in my drawer, for years, may believe it has no magnetism, and, on touching it with steel, it knows the old virtue; and, this morning, came by a man with knowledge and interests like mine, in his head, and suddenly I had thoughts again. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _Journal_ [April 1859] - The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board. . . If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies. --William Faulkner (18971962) American novelist. Really the writer doesn't want success. . . . He knows he has a short span of life, that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion, and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall Kilroy was here that somebody a hundred years, or a thousand years later will see. --William Faulkner (18971962) American novelist. {From Faulkner in the University, 1959, Session 8, quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition, John Bartlett, with Justin Kaplan, general editor. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1992.} - I think that in order to write really well and convincingly, one must he somewhat poisoned by emotion. Dislike, displeasure, resentment, faultfinding, imagination, passionate remonstrance, a sense of injustice they all make fine fuel. --Edna Ferber (18871968) American novelist and short-story writer. Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes. --F. Scott Fitzgerald (18961940) American novelist. Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it; you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective . . . . When you pass a grocer sitting in his doorway, a porter smoking a pipe, or a cab stand, show me that grocer and that porter . . . in such a way that I could never mistake them for any other grocer or porter, and by a single word give me to understand wherein the cab horse differs from fifty others before or behind it. --Gustave Flaubert (18211880) French novelist. Putting pen to paper lights more fires than matches ever will. --Malcolm S. Forbes (19171990) Publisher of "Forbes" magazine founded by his father B.C. Forbes. The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but still 'tis nonsense. --Benjamin Franklin (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. _Poor Richard Improved_ [1748] No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. --Robert Frost (18741963) American poet. "The Figure a Poem Makes" preface to _Collected Poems_ [1939]. - All women, as authors, are feeble and tiresome. I wish they were forbidden to write, on pain of having their faces deeply scarified with an oyster shell. --Nathaniel Hawthorne (18041864) American novelist and short-story writer. [1852 letter to his publisher.] America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women. --Nathaniel Hawthorne (18041864) American novelist and short-story writer. 1855 letter, quoted in Caroline Ticknor _Hawthorne and His Publisher_ [1913]. - The most essential gift for a writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it. --Ernest Hemingway (18891961) American novelist. In "Paris Review" [Spring 1958]. The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words. --Hippocrates (c. 460377 BC) Greek physician. One has to dismount from an idea, and get into the saddle again, at every parenthesis. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894) American physician, poet, and essayist. _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_ [1858], Ch. 8 - Knowledge is the foundation and source of good writing. --Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (658 BC) Roman poet. _Ars Poetica_ 309 Ye who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities. --Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (658 BC) Roman poet. _Ars Poetica_ 38 - Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists; they were like one another and like other literary men, but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature. --William Dean Howells (18371920) American novelist and critic. The last sentence of _My Mark Twain_ [1910]. ^ Victor Hugo (18021885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist. When Victor Hugo wanted to know what his publishers thought of the manuscript of _Les Misιrbles_, he sent them a note reading simply: '?' They replied: '!' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι ernard [2000 ed.] ^ Tarzan : "Tarzan, Jane, hurt me, boy, love it, Jane" Jane: "Darling, that's quite a sentence," --dialogue , "Tarzan the Ape Man", [1932 Screenplay], Cyril Hume and Ivor Novello The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. --Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [18011809]. An American friend of mine, a cultured gentleman, who loved poetry well enough for its own sake, told me that he had obtained a more correct and more satisfying idea of the Lake District from an eighteen penny book of photographic views than from all the works of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth put together. I also remember his saying concerning this subject of scenery in literature, that he would thank an author as much for writing an eloquent description of what he had just had for dinner. --Jerome K Jerome (18591927) English novelist and playwright. _Three Men on the Bummel_ - Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Quoting a college tutor, in James Boswell _Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791] [30 April 1773]. Few faults of style excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers than the use of hard words. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. "The Idler" - The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried when you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for the want of a teller but for the want of an understanding ear. --Stephen King (1947 ) American author known for horror novels. I'm not an author, but before I became mayor, I wasn't a mayor. --Edward I. Koch (1924 ) Mayor of New York City [19781989]. Quoted in "Publisher's Weekly" [25 January 1985]. The only way to find out if you can write is to set aside a certain period every day and try. Save enough money to give yourself six months to be a full-time writer. Work every day and the pages will pile up. --Judith Krantz (1928 ) American magazine journalist and author. If your character suddenly pulls a half-eaten carrot out of her pocket, let her. Later you can ask yourself if it rings true. --Anne Lamott (1954 ) American author. Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid looks most profound. --Walter Savage Landor (17751864) English poet. My advice to any young Australian writer whose talents have been recognised would be to go steerage, stow away, swim, and seek London, Yankeeland or Timbucktoo rather than stay in Australia till his genius turned to gall or beer. Or failing this and still in the interests of human nature and literature to study elementary anatomy, especially as applies to the cranium, and then shoot himself carefully with the aid of a looking glass. --Henry Lawson (18671922) Australian writer and poet. Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself it is the occurring which is difficult. --Stephen Butler Leacock (18691944) Canadian humorist. Some people have a way with words. Other people ... not have way. --Steve Martin (1945 ) American comedian and actor. - A good style should show no sign of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _The Summing Up_ [1938] What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. I have never had much patience with the writers who claim from the reader an effort to understand their meaning. You have only to go to the great philosophers to see that it is possible to express with lucidity the most subtle reflections. . . . There are two sorts of obscurity that you find in writers. One is due to negligence and the other to wilfulness. People often write obscurely because they have never taken the trouble to learn to write clearly. . . . Another cause of obscurity is that the writer is himself not quite sure of his meaning. He has a vague impression of what he wants to say, but has not, either from lack of mental power or from laziness, exactly formulated it in his mind, and it is natural enough that he should not find a precise expression for a confused idea. This is due largely to the fact that many writers think, not before, but as they write. . . . Some writers who do not think clearly are inclined to suppose that their thoughts have significance greater than at first sight appears. It is flattering to believe that they are too profound to be expressed so clearly that all who run may read, and very naturally it does not occur to such writers that the fault is with their own minds, which have not the faculty of precise reflection. Here again the magic of the written word obtains. It is very easy to persuade oneself that a phrase that one does not quite understand may mean a great deal more than one realizes. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _The Summing Up_ [1938], Chapter XI If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. It is a salutary discipline to consider the vast number of books that are written, the fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate which awaits them. What chance is there that any book will make its way among that multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of a season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these books are well and carefully written; much thought has gone into their composition; to some even has been given the anxious labour of a lifetime. The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thoughts; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _The Moon and Sixpence_ [1919] Whether you ascribe importance to euphony . . . must depend on the sensitiveness of your ear. A great many readers, and many admirable writers, are devoid of this quality. Poets as we know have always made a great use of alliteration. They are persuaded that the repetition of a sound gives an effect of beauty. I do not think it does in prose. It seems to me that in prose alliteration should be used only for a special reason; when used by accident it falls on the ear very disagreeably. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _The Summing Up_ [1938], Chapter XIII - You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two. --Larry McMurtry (1936 ) American author and screenwriter. - If I had the time, and there were no sweeter follies offering, I should like to write an essay on the books that have quite failed of achieving their original purposes, and are yet of respectable use and potency for other purposes. For example, [...] turn to "Gulliver's Travels." The thing was planned by its rev. author as a devastating satire, a terrible piece of cynicism; it survives as a story-book for sucklings. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. _Damn! A Book of Calumny_ [1918] He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. On the inaugural address of President Warren G. Harding. - Prose that clouds responsibility also diminishes humanity. When Churchill said, "We shall fight on the beaches," his grammar said for him, and to all of us who share that grammar: "I, a man, speak these words out of the thoughts of my mind, and I mean them." Suppose that he had said instead: "It may become necessary that we fight on the beaches." Then his grammar would have said for him and to us: "There may be in the universe some condition of which we ought to be mindful. You will understand, of course, that this is what should be said, but as to whether or not the whole thing is my idea or not is neither here nor there." Englishmen might well have packed up by the millions and moved to Nova Scotia. The writer of our passage [an example of hideous grant-seeking prose] would probably have said: "It may become necessary that we emphasize the importance of imparting to ourselves the skills and attitudes which are the necessary underpinnings of successful engagers in all forms of combat on the beaches." Englishmen are plucky, but not that plucky. After such words they would simply have surrendered. --Richard Mitchell (The Underground Grammarian), _Less Than Words Can Say_ [1979] Her journalism, like a diamond, will sparkle more if it is cut. --Raymond Mortimer (18951980) English writer and critic. (On Susan Sontag.) When you had to carve things in stone, you got the Ten Commandments. When things had to be written with a goose quill and you had to boil blood or whatever to make ink, you got Shakespeare. When you went over to the steel pen and manufactured inks, you got Henry James. You get to the typewriter, you get Jack Kerouac. When you get down to the word processor you get me. So improvement in the technology of writing hasn't improved writing itself, as far as I can tell. --P.J. O'Rourke (1947 ) American political satirist. In _Wired_ [January 1998]. - When one compares [Samuel] Butler's prose with the contortions of Meredith or the affectations of Stevenson, one sees what a tremendous advantage is gained simply by not trying to be clever. Butler's own ideas on the subject are worth quoting: style and was at the same time readable. Plato's having had seventy shies at one sentence is quite enough to explain to me why I dislike him. A man may, and ought to, take a great deal of pains to write clearly, tersely and euphoniously: he will write many a sentence three or four times over to do much more than that is worse than not rewriting at all: he will be at great pains to see that he does not repeat himself, to arrange his matter in the way that shall best enable the reader to master it, to cut out superfluous words and, even more, to eschew irrelevant matter: but in each case he will be thinking not of his own style but of the reader's convenience.... I should like to put it on record that I never took the smallest pains with my style, have never thought about it, and do not know or want to know whether it is a style at all or whether it is not, as I believe and hope, just common, simple straightforwardness. I cannot conceive how any man can take thought for his style without loss to himself and his readers. Butler adds characteristically, however, that he has made considerable efforts to improve his handwriting. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. You may remember that the Dial Press had been asking me for some years for a manuscript, but when I sent the [manuscript] of AF [Animal Farm] they returned it, saying shortly that, 'it was impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.' --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. Letter to Leonard Moore [23 February 1946], in _The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell_ vol. 4, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus [1968]. - I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money. --Dorothy Parker (18931967) American critic and humorist. I sat at the end of Hayden's street with the motor idling and the heater on until nine o'clock, when I ran low on gas and had to shut off the motor. By ten fifteen I was cold. The hamburgers were long gone, though the memory lingered on the back of my throat, and I was almost through the bourbon. During that time Hayden had not come to me and confessed. He had not had a visit from Joe Broz or Phil, or the Ghost of Christmas Future. The Ceremony of Moloch had not shown up and sung 'The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi' under his window. At eleven o'clock the lights in his living room went out and I went home stiff, sore, tired, crabby, dyspeptic, cold, and about five-eighths drunk. --Robert B. Parker (1932 ) American mystery writer. _The Godwulf Manuscript_ I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter. --Blaise Pascal (16231662) French mathematician, physicist, and moralist. "Lettres provinciales", XVI Good authors, too, who once knew better words Now use only four-letter words Writing prose.... Anything goes. --Cole Porter (18921964) American songwriter. "Anything Goes," [1934 song] Let him be kept from paper, pen, and ink; So may he cease to write, and learn to think. --Matthew Prior (16641721) English poet. _To a Person who Wrote Ill - On Same Person_ Every misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer's reputation. --Agnes Repplier (18551950) American author. _Points of Friction_ [1920] Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or he will certainly misunderstand them. --John Ruskin (18191900) English art and social critic. - William Safire's Rules for Writers: (William Safire (1929 ) Journalist, speechwriter, novelist, lexicographer, and winner of the 1978 Pulitzer for commentary.) Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives. - The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become. --May Sarton (19121995) American poet, novelist, and essayist. - Style is nothing but the mere silhouette of thought; and an obscure or bad style means a dull or confused brain. --Arthur Schopenhauer (17881860) German philosopher. _Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer_ [1851], "The Art of Literature: On Style" A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear. --Arthur Schopenhauer (17881860) German philosopher. _Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer_ [1851], "The Art of Literature: On Style" - Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are. --Rod Serling (19241975) American screenwriter who created, hosted, and wrote for "The Twilight Zone," an American television show [1959-1964]. So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Sonnet 76_ - If you do not immediately suppress the person who takes it upon himself to lay down the law almost every day in your columns on the subject of literary composition, I will give up the Chronicle. The man is a pedant, an ignoramus, an idiot and a self-advertising duffer. Your fatuous specialist ... is now beginning to rebuke the 'second rate' newspapers for using such phrases as 'to suddenly go' and 'to boldly say.' I ask you, Sir, to put this man out, without interfering with his perfect freedom of choice between 'to suddenly go', 'to go suddenly' and 'suddenly to go'... Set him adrift and try an intelligent Newfoundland dog in his place. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] Letter to the "London Chronicle" [1892]. My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] - Of all the arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well. --John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (16481721), English statesman. _Essay on Poetry_ [1682] A man who leaves memoirs, whether well or badly written, provided they be sincere, renders a service to future psychologists and writers. --Henryk Sienkiewicz (18461916) Polish novelist. _Without Dogma_ [1891] - The most endearing handling of a duel challenge was done by the much-loved comic author Georges Courteline. Some cocky would-be writer, wishing to get himself some free publicity, wrote Courteline an insulting letter demanding satisfaction for some trumped-up slight. The letter was badly written and the spelling execrable. Courteline, who could be a caustic grumbler but beneath whose gruff exterior was a sweetly human man, took his quaint pen in hand and replied: 'My dear young sir. As I am the offended party, the choice of weapons is mine. We shall fight with orthography. You are already dead!' --Cornelia Otis Skinner (19011979) American author and actress. _Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals_ [1962] - Style is a magic wand, and turns everything to gold that it touches. --Logan Pearsall Smith (18651946) American-born man of letters. _Afterthoughts_ [1931] The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. . . . The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is very difficult to write out of because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive, contemplative mood. --Susan Sontag [Susan Rosenblatt] (19332004) American essayist, critic, and novelist. (In Victor Bockris' _With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker_ [1981], "On Writing".) A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meaning right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. --John Ernst Steinbeck (19021968) American novelist. Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure mine is) is but a different name for conversation. --Laurence Sterne (17131768) English novelist. _Tristram Shandy_ [17591767] 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. (18691946) American teacher and editor. _The Elements of Style_ [1918] - "Ransom Notes." --H.N. Swanson, literary agent of the 1940's, when asked what kind of writing makes money, quoted in Tom Hiney, _Raymond Chandler: A Biography_ [1997]. - In writing essays, there are two things one has difficulty with spelling and stops. Nearly everybody says it is the spelling that matters. Now spelling is one of the decencies of life, like the proper use of knives and forks. It looks slovenly and nasty if you spell wrongly, like trying to eat your soup with a fork. But, intellectually, spelling English spelling does not matter. Shakespeare spelt his own name at least four different ways, and it may have puzzled his cashiers at the bank. Intellectually, stops matter a great deal. If you are getting your commas, semi-colons, and full-stops wrong, it means that you are not getting your thoughts right, and your mind is muddled. --William Temple (18811944) English theologian and Archbishop. Speech at the Royal Infant Orphanage in Wanstead [22 October 1938]. Do not be influenced by the importance of the writer, and whether his learning be great or small, but let the love of pure truth draw you to read. Do not inquire, "Who said this?" but pay attention to what is said. --Thomas a' Kempis (13801471) German ascetical writer. _Imitation of Christ_ [c.1420] Book 1, Ch. 4: "On Prudence in Action" I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose dress no one observes. I am not sure but that the same may be said of an author's written language. --Anthony Trollope (18151882) English novelist [son of Frances Trollope]. _Thackeray_ [1879], ch. 9 - Dear Jack, I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy - will you let me be yours? Jill Dear Jack I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn. For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Jill --Lynne Truss, _Eats, Shoots & Leaves_ [2003] - An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write "metropolis" for seven cents, because I can get the same money for "city." I never write "policeman," because I can get the same price for "cop."... I never write "valetudinarian" at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. "Spelling and Pictures," speech to Associated Press, New York City [18 September 1906] published in _Mark Twain's Speeches_, ed. by A. B. Paine [1923]. 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 [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. _Pudd'nhead Wilson_ [1894] The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. In a note written to himself, c. 1879, quoted in Walter Blair and Hamlin Hill _America's Humor_ [1978]. Began another boy's book more to be at work than anything else. I have written 400 pages on it therefore it is very nearly half done. It is Huck Finn's Autobiography. I like it only tolerably well, as far as I have got, and may possibly pigeonhole or burn the MS when it is done. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. {Letter to William Dean Howells [9 August 1876]. Twain was referring to "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," which was published in 1884 - Q.} You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There were things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. Opening lines of _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ [1884] There ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't agoing to no more. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. In the final paragraph of _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ [1884] - I am inordinately proud these days of the quill, for it has shown itself, historically, to be the hypodermic which inoculates men and keeps the germ of freedom always in circulation, so that there are individuals in every time in every land who are the carriers, the Typhoid Mary's, capable of infecting others by mere contact and example. These persons are feared by every tyrant who shows his fear by burning the books and destroying the individuals. --E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (18991985) American essayist and literary stylist. "Freedom" written in July 1940, in _One Man's Meat_ [1944]. Everybody is writing, writing, writing worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better is the whole tribe of the scribblers every damned one of us were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work. --Walt Whitman (18191892) American poet. Remark to the author [23 January 1889], in Horace Traubel _Walt Whtiman's Camden Conversations_, ed. Walter Teller [1973]. You may choose your words like a connoisseur, And polish it up with art, But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays, Is the word that comes from the heart. --Ella Wheeler Wilcox (18501919) American author and poet. _New Thought Pastels_ [1906] Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others. --Virginia Woolf (18821941) English novelist. Write with respect for the English language at its best and for the reader at his best. --William Zinsser (1922 ) American writer, editor, and teacher. _On Writing Well_ [1976] - You should, without hesitation pound your typewriter into a plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture. --Business Professor, University of Georgia We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of a lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition, and to beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity. --Economic Journal, rejection slip to an author. Never underestimate the appeal of your heart on paper even when written awkwardly. --anon. In the days of the pharaohs, while working on the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the tomb of the great warrior Ramses II, one inscriber said to the other: 'Tell me, do you spell macho with two testicles or three?' --anon. Rule for writers: Its important to put every apostrophe in it's proper place. --anon. ----- amphiboly (noun) [ζm-'fi-bκ-li] 1. A phrase that is ambiguous because of its syntactic structure. 2. Any ambivalent or ambiguous phrase. banal [BAY-nul]; adjective: Commonplace; trivial; hackneyed; trite. bloviate [BLOH-vee-ayt], intransitive verb: To speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner. bombast [BOM-bast] noun: Pompous or pretentious speech or writing. bowdlerize [BODE-luh-rise], transitive verb: 1. To remove or modify the parts (of a book, for example) considered offensive. 2. To modify, as by shortening, simplifying, or distorting in style or content. Bowdlerize derives from the name Thomas Bowdler, an editor in Victorian times who rewrote Shakespeare, removing all profanity and sexual references so as not to offend the sensibilities of the audiences of his day. chiasmus (noun) A two-part rhetorical structure with a clever inversion of the first part in the second, e.g. "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" or "Never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate." concinnity [kuhn-SIN-uh-tee], noun: 1. Internal harmony or fitness in the adaptation of parts to a whole or to each other. 2. Studied elegance of design or arrangement --used chiefly of literary style. Ex.: Even so, rules are not merely there to be ignored; in fact, they constitute a democratic aristocracy based not on Debrett's Peerage or the Almanach de Gotha but on the user's respect for comprehensibility, consistency, concision and concinnity -- or, simply, elegance. --John Simon, "House Rules," _New York Times_, [31 October 1999] coruscate [KOR-uh-skayt], intransitive verb: 1. To give off or reflect bright beams or flashes of light; to sparkle. 2. To exhibit brilliant, sparkling technique or style. The noun form is coruscation. dithyramb (noun) A passionate or inflated poem, speech, or writing. eviscerate (verb) [κ-'vi-sκr-eyt] To cut out the internal organs, to disembowel; to remove the inner or essential parts. facetious (adj.) 1. Supposed to be funny: intended to be humorous but often silly or inappropriate 2. Not in earnest: not to be taken seriously harangue (verb) [hκ-'rζng] Verbal harassment, a tirade; a ranting uncontrolled preachment or piece of writing focused on a subject of interest only to the speaker or author. idyll (noun) [EYE-dl] 1. A simple descriptive work, either in poetry or prose, dealing with simple, rustic life; pastoral scenes; and the like. 2. A narrative poem treating an epic, romantic, or tragic theme. jabberwocky [noun] Nonsense language: speech or writing that is meaningless and often deliberately whimsical or humorous (Early 20th century. From "Jabberwocky," nonsense poem by English writer Lewis Carroll, from his book _Through the Looking Glass_ [1872]) jejune (adj.) [ji-'jun] Lacking in nutrient content, hence insipid, dull, lacking in intellectual content. jejunely (adverb) jejuneness" (noun) "lapsus calami" (a slip of the pen). limn [LIM], transitive verb: 1. To depict by drawing or painting. 2. To portray in words; to describe. In telling these people's stories Mr. Butler draws upon the same gifts of empathy and insight, the same ability to limn an entire life in a couple of pages. --Michiko Kakutani, "Earthlings May Endanger Your Peaceful Rationality," _New York Times_, [10 March 2000] oeuvre (noun) ['oo-vrκ] A creative work or body of creative work. prosaic (adjective) [pro-'zey-ik] 1. Pertaining to writing that is not poetry; 2. Unadorned, plain, lacking in imagination. sesquipedalian [ses-kwuh-puh-DAYL-yuhn], adj.: 1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words. 2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables. tautology (noun) Redundant word or phrase, a pleonasm. Example: an unmarried bachelor. truncate (transitive verb) circa 1727 1. To shorten by or as if by cutting off 2. To replace (an edge or corner of a crystal) by a plane turbid [TUR-bid], adjective: 1. Muddy; thick with or as if with roiled sediment; not clear; -- used of liquids of any kind. 2. Thick; dense; dark; -- used of clouds, air, fog, smoke, etc. 3. Disturbed; confused; disordered. Ex.: Rough or smooth, the Irish Sea at Blackpool is always turbid. Beneath the murk float unspeakable things. --David Walker, "Is Labour right to end its affair with Blackpool? YES says David," _Independent_, [26 March 1998] end page | UGLY - UNICORNS | UNHAPPINESS | UNIONS - USELESS | VACATION - VENGENCE | VENICE - VICTORY | VIGILANCE - VIRGINITY | VIRTUE - VULGARITY | WAGES - WAR & PEACE | WAR (THE CIVIL) - WAR (THE REVOLUTIONARY) | WAR (THOUGHTS ABOUT) - PAGE 1 (A-M) | WAR (THOUGHTS ABOUT) - PAGE 2 (N-Z) | WAR (VIETNAM) | WAR (WORLD WAR I) | WAR (WORLD WAR II) PAGE 1 (A-M) | WAR (WORLD WAR II) PAGE 2 (N-Z) | WASHINGTON (D.C.) - WEAK/WEAKNESS | WEALTH - WEASELS | WEATHER - WELLS (H.G.) | WEST (THE OLD/WILD) - WILDE (OSCAR) | WILL - WINNING | WINTER - WISDOM | WISHING - WIVES | WOMEN - WOMEN'S LIB | WOMEN'S RIGHTS - WORDS | WORK - WORLD | WORLD TRADE CENTER & PENTAGON DISASTER, 11 SEPTEMB | WORRY - WRONG | WRITING | YESTERDAY - ZOOS | | R | S | T | U - END | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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