Richard Dawkins Quotes

When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.

Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it.

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

If you actually do cold readings, it's very close to how people actually talk, because you're experiencing these thoughts anew every moment, and trying to make them come out coherently.

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

Genuine good taste consists in saying much in few words, in choosing among our thoughts, in having order and arrangement in what we say, and in speaking with composure.

The right word fitly spoken is a precious rarity.

A letter does not blush.

The written word is everything.

We don't normally think of it as such, but writing is a technology.

I write my columns pretty carefully.

I enjoy finding the right word and giving each its full measure, its full space in a sentence.

I try to write an essay every time I speak.

... writing letters is thinking, just as talking to you is thinking.

Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost. Life would split asunder without them. 'Come to tea, come to dinner, what's the truth of the story? have you heard the news? life in the capital is wonderful; the Russian dancers....' These are our stays and props. These lace our days together and make of life a perfect globe.

Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

Writing is the great invention of the world.

Every spoken word double-crosses us. The written word is the only tolerable form of communication, as it isn't a stone in a bridge between souls but a ray of light between stars.

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

As soon as you move one step up from the bottom, your effectiveness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken and written word.

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

Writing is always harder than talking.

I'm clearer now in what I want to say, and I know better how to say just that.

The scope of what I have to say determines the length of what I write.