Literature and Words

Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find.

Day by day the old order of things changes, and new modes of thought pass over our world, and it may be that, before many years, talking will have taken the place of literature, and the personal screech silenced the music of impersonal utterance. Something of the dignity of the literary calling will probably be lost, and it is perhaps a dangerous thing for a country to be too eloquent.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

All of us contain Music & Truth, but most of us can't get it out .

Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Never argue with people who buy ink by the gallon.

A good style must, first of all, be clear. It must not be mean or above the dignity of the subject. It must be appropriate.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

I N THE AFTERNOONS , Gertrude Stein and I used to go antique hunting in the local shops, and I remember once asking her if she thought I should become a writer. In the typically cryptic way we were all so enchanted with, she said, “No.” I took that to mean yes and sailed for Italy the next day.

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.

Action is eloquence.

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.

When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple; take it and copy it. Give references? Why should you? Either your readers know where you have taken the passage and the precaution is needless, or they do not know and you humiliate them.

Taking the question in general, I should say, in the case of many poets, that the most important thing for them to do … is to write as little as possible.

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

Very few authors are able to do actual writing for more than three hours a day. In fact, a good many very successful ones average no more than an hour.

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves.

O moral Gower, this book I directe To the.

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough, That sometime grew within this learned man.

A deal of skimble-skamble stuff.

Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt?

The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room; Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

You taught me language; and my profit on ’t Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you, For learning me your language!