George Orwell Quotes

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

Good writing ... involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

Multitudes of words are neither an argument of clear ideas in the writer, nor a proper means of conveying clear notions to the reader.

Easy reading requires hard writing.

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

I've always written very tightly, and there's a good reason for that. There's no point in using words that you're not going to apply.

Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

We should not write so that it is possible for [the reader] to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

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

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

To write well it is first necessary to have something to say.

Easy writing makes hard reading.

The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean.

Writing and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.

I thought clarity of communication was the most important thing in writing, and if you really cared about getting your idea across, you would say it in the most straightforward way possible. Later, in college and grad school, I came to realize that language is a technology like any other, and that it's always evolving - clarity of expression is always evolving.

Whatever I'm doing, I try to write well. I try to give the reader a nice, clean well-written surface, where the writing is transparent. It probably takes me longer to write things, but it's very important to me that the writing itself be good.

Easy writing's curst hard reading.

A lot of critics think I'm stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.

The first thing to ask when writing a sentence is 'What am I trying to do?'

Good writing , like gold , combines lustrous lucidity with high density. What this means is good writing is packed with hints.

Anyone should be very suspicious of a sentence he's written that can't be read aloud easily.

Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood.

It's important to look ahead, I think, to shape your stuff for - again - effect. Because it's just so easy to write long, flowy sentences, get lost in them. The hard part's making them matter, making yourself make them matter.