H. P. Lovecraft Quotes

Readers want to visualize your story as they read it. The more exact words you give them, the more clearly they see it, smell it, hear it, taste it. Thus, a dog should be an 'Airedale,' not just a 'dog.' A taste should not be merely 'good' but 'creamy and sweet' or 'sharply salty' or 'buttery on the tongue.'

Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?

Whatever you want to say, there is only one word to express it, only one verb to give it movement, only one adjective to qualify it.

Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.

Before using a fine word, make a place for it.

The use of the right word, the exact word, is the difference between a pencil with a sharp point and a thick crayon.

Fill your pages with details. Work hard to get the right word.

Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature.

Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth.

Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.

When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough.

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.

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

I do not wish to produce prose that draws attention to itself, rather than the world it describes.

What Bradbury had that most other science-fiction writers didn't have at that time was a love for beautiful language, evocative description, and haunting phrases that would stick with the reader.

Bierce radiates brilliancy, and perhaps no other man of letters ever had a more ready command of condensed expression. For him, each word has its unique place in the peerage of words, and he would not use a word out of place any sooner than he would thrust an ape into a captain's saddle.

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.

You don't want a diction gathered from the newspapers, caught from the air, common and unsuggestive; but you want one whose every word is full-freighted with suggestion and association, with beauty and power.

Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb. You know the ones: Was, did, had, made, went, looked... One-size-fits-all looks like crap on anyone. Sew yourself a custom made suit. Pick a better verb. Challenge all those verbs to really lift some weight for you.

The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean.

Writing and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.

So in writing, there is always a right word, and every other than that is wrong. There is no beauty in words except in their collocation. The effect of a fanciful word misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing on a human head.