Mal Peet Quotes

I'm actually a great fan of lucidity.

I love language, and I love the failure of language.

The fact that something is actually understandable and relatable doesn't mean that it's unsophisticated or banal. It just means that it's crystal-clear. And if you can't explain it, that doesn't necessarily mean it's so brilliant that ordinary mortals can't fathom it. It might just mean that it makes no sense.

Complexity creates confusion, simplicity focus.

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated.

If something can't be explained on the back of an envelope, it's rubbish.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

The key to all knowledge comes in words of just one syllable, apparently.... There's only the last page left to write on. I'll fill it with words of just one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

Make sure your message is clear, yet that you are faithful to its complexity.

It is my conviction that basic Reality is not all that perplexing. What seems difficult to assimilate are the manifold details of Reality, not its fundamental elements.

To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.

To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.

Sometime reality is too complex. Stories give it form.

If your work is so smart that only smart people get it, it's not that smart.

Truth and clarity are complementary.

An expert is someone who takes something you already know and makes it sound confusing.

Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.

I suppose if you simplify things, it's going to make it easier to understand.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

An old French mathematician said: "A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street." This clearness and ease of comprehension, here insisted on for a mathematical theory, I should still more demand for a mathematical problem if it is to be perfect; for what is clear and easily comprehended attracts, the complicated repels us.

Simplicity not simplistic.

I've spent my life trying to make things simpler. Because I find ultimately that complicated doesn't reach the heart.

Find the heart of it. Make the complex simple, and you can achieve mastery.

[Richard Feynman] truly believed that if you couldn't explain something simply, you didn't understand it.