Some trenchant reflections on the art and craft of writing...
This book fills a much-needed gap.
Moses Hadas
Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.
George Orwell
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the work.
Emile Zola
Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.
Joan Didion
Men of few words are the best men.
William Shakespeare
Why don't you write books people can read?
Nora Joyce (to James)
The letter I have written today is longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
Robert Graves
Four basic premises of good writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity and humanity.
William Zinsser
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.
George Bernard Shaw
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.
H G Wells
The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
Clifton Fadiman
The work was like peeling an onion. The outer skin came off with difficulty, but in no time you'd be down to the innards, tears streaming from your eyes as more and more beautiful reductions became possible.
Edward Blishen
An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
Adlai Stevenson
I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery.
Kate Chopin
Where were you fellows when the paper was blank?
Fred Allen
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
Saul Bellow
This book has too much space between the covers.
Ambrose Bierce
