Literature and Words

I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.

And how moving is the eloquence of the untaught when it is the heart that is speaking!

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

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

Use the right word, not its second cousin.

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug .

The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Those who do not read the news are uninformed. Those who do are misinformed .

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story .

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense .

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.

...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

Abbreviators do harm to knowledge and to love.

Men and words are ready made, and you, O Painter, if you do not know how to make your figures move, are like an orator who knows not how to use his words.

Things severed shall be united and shall acquire of themselves such virtue that they shall restore to men their lost memory: That is the papyrus sheets, which are formed out of several strips and preserve the memory of the thoughts and deeds of men.

Study me, reader, if you delight in me, because on very few occasions shall I return to the world, and because the patience for this profession is found in very few, and only in those who wish to compose things anew. Come, oh men, to see the miracles that such studies will disclose to nature.

Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead: The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.