William Faulkner Quotes

We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.

He is the most brilliant speaker of the English tongue of all men on this globe

The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

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

I preferred the simplest vocabulary.

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

Orrin Hatch has a five pound tongue in a four pound head.

word thrower … phrase maker

This fellow has a silver tongue

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.

He could talk a dog off a meat wagon. He talked a lot but said nothing.

I work real hard so the reader doesn't have to. I don't want them to have to look up words.

If the noun is good and the verb is strong, you almost never need an adjective.

Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

In general, what is written must be easy to read and easy to speak; which is the same.

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

Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.

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.

I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose.

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop.... I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen.

Churchill wrote his own speeches. When a leader does that, he becomes emotionally invested with his utterances...If Churchill had had a speech write in 1940, Britain would be speaking German today.

All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.

Your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

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.