Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I've gotten very alert not just to mixed metaphor but to any writing mistake.

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

If words are doing their job, then their novelty will not be the most noticeable thing about them.

I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.

Mark Twain said, 'The right word is to the nearly right word as lightning is to the lightning bug.' Fill your book with lightning.

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

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word.

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 sound of words in a novel is a pretty amazing thing, and I am concerned with the sound of every word I write.

Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

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.

Never use the word, 'very.' It is the weakest word in the English language; doesn't mean anything. If you feel the urge of 'very' coming on, just write the word, 'damn,' in the place of 'very.' The editor will strike out the word, 'damn,' and you will have a good sentence.

I love revising things, because you see how you can get the language to get closer to intention. You know there are three ways to say X thing, but one will say it better than the other two. And in saying it better, it gets you closer to something.

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

I'm just very careful with my words when I write. Obsessively careful. I'm the sort of person who worries about the difference between "slim" and "slender."

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.

Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.