Closely Quotes


Good writing is clear thinking made visible. Bill Wheeler Authors 404
For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life. W. Somerset Maugham Authors 173
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read. Sir Winston Churchill Authors 125
Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity. William Zinsser Authors 125
This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again. Oscar Wilde Authors 114
Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements. Samuel Johnson Authors 113
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. Tom Clancy Authors 112
Nobody can give a good performance unless the authors and composers have written a good part, a fact which is often overlooked. Judy Holliday Authors 111
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. Henry David Thoreau Authors 110
A writer and nothing else; a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right. John K. Hutchens Authors 109
As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out. Mark Twain Authors 106
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge. W. Somerset Maugham Authors 106
The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention. Ezra Pound Authors 105
The walls are the publishers of the poor. Eduardo Galeano Authors 103
Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison. Samuel Johnson Authors 98
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. Mark Twain Authors 96
If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us. William Faulkner Authors 95
Richard Bach with this book does two things. He gives me Flight. He makes me Young. For both I am deeply grateful. Ray Bradbury Authors 95
You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan. Ian McEwan Authors 95
We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. Virginia Woolf Authors 94
Why did I write? What sin to me unknown dipped me in ink, my parents , or my own? Alexander Pope Authors 93
Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives. Vladimir Nabokov Authors 93
All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point Virginia Woolf Authors 92
I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist. Harriet Beecher Stowe Authors 92
In general I do not draw well with literary men -- not that I dislike them but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication. Lord (George Gordon) Byron Authors 92
The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander. Walter Savage Landor Authors 92
Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain. Elie Wiesel Authors 90
Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. Jorge Luis Borges Authors 90
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty. John Steinbeck Authors 90
Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market. Ezra Pound Authors 90
The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it. Ernest Hemingway Authors 90
From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it. Oscar Wilde Authors 89
People think that I can teach them style. What stuff it all is. Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style. Matthew Arnold Authors 89
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him. James Baldwin Authors 88
Rereading this novel today, replaying the moves of its plot, I feel rather like Anderssen fondly recalling his sacrifice of both Rooks to the unfortunate and noble Kieseritsky Vladimir Nabokov Authors 88
Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease. Charles Caleb Colton Authors 88
A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind. Isaac Bashevis Singer Authors 88
What an occupation! To sit and flay your fellow men and then offer their skins for sale and expect them to buy them. J. August Strindberg Authors 88
In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is. Geoffrey Cottrell Authors 87
It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them. John Ruskin Authors 87
Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors. Edward Dahlberg Authors 87
Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth. Edward Dahlberg Authors 87
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise. Ralph Waldo Emerson Authors 87
I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better. A. J. Liebling Authors 86
If any man wishes to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts. Johann von Goethe Authors 86
Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune. Marcus Tullius Cicero Authors 85
Thus, with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: Fool! said my muse to me, look in thy heart, and write. Sir Philip Sidney Authors 85
Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books. Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel)Authors 85
The writer has little control over personal temperament none over historical moment and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic. Julian Barnes Authors 85
Every writer since the beginning of time, just like other people, has been afflicted by what a friend of mine calls William Styron Authors 85

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