Hosea Ballou Quotes

Fine writing is a distinct disadvantage. So is unique literary style. They take attention from the subject

You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight. You either continue to write puerile bilge, or you change. In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

I read all the time so it's difficult to say who my all-time favourites are. One is George Orwell, because he makes political writing so simple a child could understand it.

Simple is the only way I can write.

Whatever simplicity I've achieved in writing, I think I owe most of it to Jean Renoir and Hemingway: simple, declarative sentences. I've read some very good writers, but the sentences were so long that I've forgotten what the point was.

It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

The more clearly you write, the more easily and surely you will be understood.

The way you write affects what you say.

An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.

We know much of a writer by his style. An open and imperious disposition is shown in short sentences, direct and energetic. A secretive and proud mind is cold and obscure in style. An affectionate and imaginative nature pours out luxuriantly, and blossoms all over with ornament.

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,--to be intelligently simple.

I would observe to you that what is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in life while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.

Plate glass... has no beauty of its own. Ideally, you ought not to be able to see it at all, but through it you can see all that is happening outside. That is the equivalent of writing that is plain and unadorned. Ideally, in reading such writing, you are not even aware that you are reading. Ideas and events seem merely to flow from the mind of the writer into that of the reader without any barrier between. I hope that is what is happening when you read this book

So, then, what is style? There are two chief aspects of any piece of writing: 1) what you say and 2) how you say it. The former is "content" and the latter is "style."

What I'm constantly striving for in my prose is clarity. So that, ideally, the writing will become so transparent that the reader will forget that the medium of communication is language.

In the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the reader. Where there’s some kind of relationship between the writer and the reader - even though it’s mediated by a kind of text - there’s an electricity about it.

A really good style comes only when a man has become as good as he can be. Style is character. A good style cannot come from a bad undisciplined character.

Place yourself in the background; write in a way that comes naturally; work from a suitable design; write with nouns and verbs; do not overwrite; do not overstate; avoid the use of qualifiers; do not affect a breezy style; use orthodox spelling; do not explain too much; avoid fancy words; do not take shortcuts as the cost of clarity; prefer the standard to the offbeat; make sure the reader knows who is speaking; do not use dialect; revise and rewrite.

The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.

Do but take care to express yourself in a plain, easy Manner, in well-chosen, significant and decent Terms, and to give a harmonious and pleasing Turn to your Periods: study to explain your Thoughts, and set them in the truest Light, labouring as much as possible, not to leave them dark nor intricate, but clear and intelligible.

When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural.

Usually when I'm writing, I kind of know what it is before I start writing and I write stream of consciousness style.

I should say that I'm not conscious of any particular style or any particular literary device when I am writing. I have written 22 books, and they are all very different. I have tried all kinds of genres.

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.