Roald Dahl Quotes

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

I want my prose to be as clear as a pane of glass.

When you catch an adjective, kill it - perhaps the best possible advice for budding writers.

My sentences tend to be very short and rather spare. I'm more your paragraph kind of gal.

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.

One mistake with beginners in writing is, that they think it important to spin out something long. It is a great deal better not to write more than a page or two, unless you have something to say, and can write it correctly.

I've really tried to strip my writing of as many adjectives and adverbs as I possibly can.

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.

I don't write with a complex style, I cannot.

Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.

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

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.

I wonder now what Ernest Hemingways dictionary looked like, since he got along so well with dinky words that anybody can spell and truly understand.

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.

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.

I think in most cases, unless you're writing about a character who is garrulous, you say what you've got to say and then get out. Those little conjunctions, those little turnaround words help you do it. That's the way I like to write: I get rid of things rather than add them.

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.

As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.

In my later years I have sought to become simpler, straighter and purer in my handling of the language. I've had many writing heroes, writers who have influenced me. Of the ones still alive, I can think of E.B. White. I certainly admire the pure, crystal stream of his prose. When I was very young as a sportswriter I knowingly and unashamedly imitated others. I had a series of heroes who would delight me for a while and I'd imitate them--Damon Runyon, Westbrook Pegler, Joe Williams.

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.

A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

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.

I try to use short sentences, short paragraphs and short chapters to keep the reader's interest.