Posts tagged writing
Posts tagged writing
The pen is the tongue of the soul; as are the thoughts engendered there, so will be the things written.
Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.
Writing is a difficult, lonely endeavor, and every writer is a perpetual beginner. Therefore, don’t be ungenerous with another person’s attempts. Such an act will only reflect on you.
It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound - that he will never get over it.
Nouns and verbs are almost pure metal; adjectives are cheaper ore.
The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought.
Words, like eyeglasses, blur everything that they do not make more clear.
I can’t write five words but that I change seven.
If you would be pungent, be brief, for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
