P. D. James Quotes

We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.

Shakespeare's taught me that there are more words in the English language than I have got in my head.

Others can rule, many can fight, but only Thomas Paine can write for us the English tongue.

I love the English language. Words have power.

I knew at five years old what I wanted to do for a living. I started reading newspapers and books out loud at a very young age. I was very focused on English and building my vocabulary.

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.

Joyce's writing in Dubliners contains some of the most unshowily beautiful sentences in the English language. I learned from him that if you write a good, clean line of English, you can get under a reader's skin. The reader won't even know why, but there you are. Didion, Berger, the many others I mentioned above, and many, many poets I haven't mentioned. Writers of this calibre are the moving targets the rest of us are always chasing.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.

Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.

He who speaks, he who writes is above all one who speaks on behalf of all those who have no voice.

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

I used to write as an escape. There's no escape. There's just me sending my voice into the dark, waiting for an echo.

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.

Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

Our everyday language has become encumbered, Germanic, artificial, bureaucratic, inorganic. It may not be exaggerated to say that by now American writers face but two alternatives: write English, or write gobbledygook.

Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

Let's agree then . . . if you're about to come to a conclusion, you'll head off in another direction. You might even find your own voice.

Most of screenplay writing is deciding which voices you want to listen to and take on board.

Writing in a nuanced way, getting at all the details in a way that remains interesting for the reader, is very difficult.

There's this pet phrase about writing that is bandied around particularly in workshops about "finding your own voice as a poet", which I suppose means that you come out from under the direct influence of other poets and have perhaps found a way to combine those influences so that it appears to be your own voice. But I think you could also put it a different way. You, quote, find your voice, unquote, when you are able to invent this one character who resembles you, obviously, and probably is more like you than anyone else on earth, but is not the equivalent to you.

Must you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought. If your work consists only of fragments and floating clauses, the Grammar Police aren't going to come and take you away. Even William Strunk, that Mussolini of rhetoric, recognized the delicious pliability of language. "It is an old observation," he writes, "that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric." Yet he goes on to add this thought, which I urge you to consider: "Unless he is certain of doing well, [the writer] will probably do best to follow the rules."

English literature is a glorious inheritance which is open to all - there are no barriers, no coupons, and no restrictions. In the English language and in its great writers there are great riches and treasures, of which, of course, the Bible and Shakespeare stand along on the highest platform.