Others

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.

Write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you are writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.

Our words must seem to be inevitable.

A word once let out of the cage cannot be whistled back again.

I never write metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city . I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop .

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

Word-carpentry is like any other kind of carpentry: you must join your sentences smoothly.

Words: the pieces of change in the currency of a sentence. They must not get in the way. There is always too much small change.

Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.

At a reading in 1968, the poet Marianne Moore solicited questions from the audience and someone asked, “What words of advice, if any, would you give to a beginning poet who hates words?” The 81-year-old Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner pondered for a moment and then replied, “That may be very auspicious. Words are a very great trap.” Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

Exercise your words. Try them out in new relationships.

Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium.

A man who thinks much of his words as he writes them will generally leave behind him work that smells of oil.

People don’t like using dictionaries when they’re reading mere novels.

Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I’ve seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I try not to be careless about what I utter, write, sing. I’m careful about what I give voice to.

Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I’ve seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I try not to be careless about what I utter, write, sing. I’m careful about what I give voice to.

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

There is always one right word; use it, despite its foul or merely ludicrous associations.

It is immoral not to tell.

Write to register history.

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherazade, in order not to die. It’s one of the oldest urges of mankind. It’s a way of stalling death.

Each of us is like a desert, and a literary work is like a cry from the desert, or like a pigeon let loose with a message in its claws, or like a bottle thrown into the sea. The point is: to be heard—even if by one single person.

You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.

You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.