William Safire Quotes

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

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

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

It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

Use the right word, not its second cousin.

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.

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

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

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.

There are three types of words: words we all know, words we should know, and words nobody knows. Don't use the third category.

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.

Before you use a fancy word, make room for it.

"Very" is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of "I love you very much" or the heart-slamming intensity of "I love you"?

We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.

The more words you have at your disposal, the more precisely you can express yourself.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

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.

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.

I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose.

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."

Your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.

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.

Human, Allen, is an adjective, and its use as a noun is in itself regrettable.