Literature and Words

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.

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

It is immoral not to tell.

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

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.

Write to register history.

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.

When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.

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

You write because you want to be read.

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second, that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can’t think of what to do with the long winter evenings.

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for the money.

H EMINGWAY GAVE a great piece of advice about writing, which I follow. He said always finish when you’re in a little bit of a flow, for the next bout.

Never write about a place until you’re away from it, because it gives you perspective.

Every novelist ought to invent his own technique.

The moment a man begins to talk about technique, that’s proof he is fresh out of ideas.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

Write with a smile, even when it’s horrible or tragic.

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

It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion. If you can say a thing with one stroke, unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a marchande de plaisir , a decorative litterateur, or a musical confectioner, or a painter of fans with cupids and coquettes. Handel had power.