Joseph Joubert Quotes

Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.

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

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.

So in writing, there is always a right word, and every other than that is wrong. There is no beauty in words except in their collocation. The effect of a fanciful word misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing on a human head.

Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.

Whatever you want to say, there is only one word to express it, only one verb to give it movement, only one adjective to qualify it.

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.

I'm just very careful with my words when I write. Obsessively careful. I'm the sort of person who worries about the difference between "slim" and "slender."

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.

I like playing around with the words; I love it when I feel like I've picked the exact right word to describe whatever it is I'm trying to describe.

I love the right words. I think economy and precision of language are important.

It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb. You know the ones: Was, did, had, made, went, looked... One-size-fits-all looks like crap on anyone. Sew yourself a custom made suit. Pick a better verb. Challenge all those verbs to really lift some weight for you.

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

To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

The use of the right word, the exact word, is the difference between a pencil with a sharp point and a thick crayon.

I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care.

Less depends upon the choice of words than upon this, that their introduction shall be justified by pregnant theorems.

If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

Words are very much my thing. I'm very picky and choosy with them. So, I kind of edit myself to the point of, almost stumping myself, sometimes.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.