Quotations About Writing and Editing

I’ve been collecting quotations about writing and writers, editing and editors, wording and words for decades. Here are just some of my favorites.

 

Everyone needs an editor. ~ Tim Foote

The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the same as the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. ~ Mark Twain

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is. ~ August Wilson

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. ~ Orson Scott Card

A metaphor is like a simile. ~ Author Unknown

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~ Mark Twain

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers. ~ H. L. Mencken

Many writers profess great exactness in punctuation who never yet made a point. ~ George Dennison Prentice

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper. ~ Steve Martin

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. ~ Richard Back

One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader. ~ Horace

If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing. ~ Kingsley Amis

There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together. ~ Josh Billings

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. ~ Thomas Jefferson.

Good things, when short, are twice as good. ~ Baltasar Gracian

The first draft of anything is shit. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Rereading reveals rubbish and redundance. ~ Duane Alan Hahn

Always avoid alliteration. ~ Author Unknown 

The time to begin an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say. ~ Mark Twain

Editing might be a bloody trade. But knives aren’t the exclusive property of butchers. Surgeons use them too. ~  Blake Morrison

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. ~ John Ruskin

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~  Gene Fowler

Every writer I know has trouble writing. ~  Joseph Heller

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. ~  Arthur Plotnik

An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff. ~ Adlai Stevenson

Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason. ~ Richard C. Trench

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know? ~ Steve Wright

You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences. ~  Anatole France  

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. ~ Author Unknown

I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter. ~ James Michener

Rewriting ripens what you’ve written. ~ Duane Alan Hahn

The wastebasket is a writer’s best friend. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~ Elmore Leonard

Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. ~ Samuel Johnson
 
Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs. ~  John Osborne

Those who write clearly have readers; those who write obscurely have commentators. ~ Albert Camus

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. ~ T. S. Eliot

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous. ~ Robert Benchley

I write to teach myself what I already know. ~ Duane Alan Hahn

If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research. ~ Wilson Mizner

For I am a bear of very little brain and long words bother me. ~ Winnie the Pooh

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails driving truth into our memory. ~ Diderot

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Never be so brief as to become obscure. ~ Tryon Edwards

There is no artifice as good and desirable as simplicity. ~ St. Francis de Sales

As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out. ~ Mark Twain

I do not like to write — I like to have written. ~ Gloria Steinem

It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. ~ Robert Southey