Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light. – Joseph Pulitzer
Easy reading is damn hard writing. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite. – Edward Albee
The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. – Mark Twain
Writing has made me a better man. It has put me in contact with those fleeting moments which prove the existence. – Ishmael Reed
Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. – Hermann Hesse
Words make love with one another. – Andre Breton
The sovereign rule: don’t say it, write it. – James Michener
Only a mediocre writer is always at his best. – W. Somerset Maugham
With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs. – James Thurber
I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat and flatter it. – Janet Flanner
I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it. – William Carlos Williams
There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together. – Josh Billings
In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style. – Sydney Smith
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. – Thomas Mann
The waste basket is the writer’s best friend. – Isaac Bashevis Singer
