Helen Dunmore Quotes

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

You start realizing that good prose is crunchy. There's texture in your mouth as you say it. You realize bad writing, bland writing, has no texture, no taste, no corners in your mouth. I'm a great believer in reading aloud.

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

Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.

Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.

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.

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

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

Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins.

A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.

I am a stickler for damn good writing.

Good writing is really meaningful, and it's one of the - it's still one of the best tools we have to get and capture people's attention.

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

The fight against bad English is not frivolous.

An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.

There's a perception that good writing is writing which runs smoothly. But smooth-running prose can work against what you're trying to express in a novel.

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.

Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience; I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,--to be intelligently simple.

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.

When a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too.

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

Bland writing - timid, antiseptic, vanilla writing - is nearly as unhealthy as the brutal and dark. Instead of sipping, say, elixir, nectar, tequila, or champagne, the reader is invited to slurp lumpy milk or choke on the author's dust bunnies.