Maurice Saatchi Quotes

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

I write slowly. I can't move on until I've got a paragraph right.

By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but by writing well we are brought to write quickly.

Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.

Just writing a lot doesn't necessarily make you a better writer. You have to hear yourself as a writer, and the best way to do that is to read your writing out loud.

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.

I'm no lyrical stylist; you wouldn't pick me for a perfect sentence, and I certainly wouldn't describe my novels as intellectual.

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

I don't write quickly, and I don't want to.

It takes me ages to write stuff.

If something is well-written, it has a chance to be good and if it's not well-written, it will not be good. It could even become popular, but it won't be good.

I would hope that my writing's cleaner than it was when I started.

I've never been a fast writer.

I write fast, I write beautifully, I write convincingly.

A.J. Liebling, one of my heroes, used to say that he could write better than anyone who wrote faster, and faster than anyone who could write better. I'm one nine-hundredth as good as Liebling, but that principle may slightly apply.

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say.

It just happens I write fast and always have done.

I don't actually have to think very hard when I'm writing. I mean, there are times where it's a task, and you have to plug away and plug away. But then there are times when a song writes itself in 15 minutes, and you're just struggling to keep up with it.

It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing.

I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.

I'm quite good at not writing.

When you have good writing, the rhythm of the scene is very apparent. What the scene demands is very clear.