Andrew Vachss Quotes

When writing for the page, the focus is on the design - how the words appear on the page. I try to make it as direct and simple as possible.

Hard writing makes easy reading.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

I think that's easier to read. Pardon me. Less difficult to read.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

I write everything in Courier 12 because I write for publication, not pleasure.

Writing is sometimes a balancing act between keeping things easily readable and being accurate.

Omit needless words.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

I think a lot of writers are tempted to add complexity by over-complicating things, but always remember that most natural rules/laws are, at their core, simple. Start simple, and build from there, or you risk getting yourself and your readers tangled.

I'm not an angry person. When I write, the lawyer in me tries to make it as easy to read as possible.

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

Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.

Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins.

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

I want it to be easy to read. I'm not writing exotic literature.

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

Format is just the language. Content is the only thing that is important. Form is like handwriting. Whether you write in a scribble or clean handwriting or type it, the content remains the same. You want to write in clean hand, in a kind of a clear format only because it is aesthetically pleasing. I can scribble, that's also fine.

The unread is always better than the unreadable.

Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.

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

Of all the needs a book has the chief need is that it be readable.

People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.

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.

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