Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.

Ultimately, the first, best step in getting your work noticed is to write good work. If people don't engage in your writing, no amount of serialization or free downloads is going to matter. You have to write something worth reading, and often it takes time to get at that level.

I am a stickler for damn good writing.

Whatever I'm doing, I try to write well. I try to give the reader a nice, clean well-written surface, where the writing is transparent. It probably takes me longer to write things, but it's very important to me that the writing itself be good.

Learn to write well, or not to write at all.

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.

With great writing, there is great clarity.

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

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

Unless you're a terribly bad writer, you are never going to have too many readers.

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

You should write, write, write every day, and learn to edit and pare it right back so you're proud of every sentence, and each one is either being useful or beautiful, but hopefully both.

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

Once something is well-written, then everything else is gravy.

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

From writing rapidly it does not result that one writes well, but from writing well it results that one writes rapidly.

Disorganizatio n is the enemy of good writing.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

It's easy to write something average or even something good. But writing well is quite challenging.

I think my writing has become "cleaner."

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. You are trained to get rid of anything nonessential. You go in, you start writing your article, assuming a person's going to stop reading the minute you give them a reason. So the trick is: don't give them one.

The chief difference between good writing and better writing may be measured by the number of imperceptible hesitations the reader experiences as he goes along.