Dr. Seuss Quotes

Anyone can make an article longer; the skill is keeping it tight and lean.

Omit needless words.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

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

I think in most cases, unless you're writing about a character who is garrulous, you say what you've got to say and then get out. Those little conjunctions, those little turnaround words help you do it. That's the way I like to write: I get rid of things rather than add them.

Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word that he can spare.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off... As my friend Julius Lester says, 'A picture book is the essence of an experience.'

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Directing my own writing, I see that I talk way too much, and everything can happen much sooner, with much less said about it.

It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that requires more precision, and, if I may so say, purity of expression, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use; it is not to throw words together in any combinations we please, but to follow and avail ourselves of the true idiom of the language.

Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.

I've really tried to strip my writing of as many adjectives and adverbs as I possibly can.

The art of the three-minute song is more like journalism than writing a big 400-page book. You want to be brief, you want to make sense right yen and there. And sometimes that takes a bit of work.

People who want to express themselves effectively can learn a lot from the hard-won concision of the copywriter.

I cannot write long books; I leave that for those who have nothing to say.

It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story.

The lessons learned in journalism also apply. Writing for NPR has taught me to cut a piece in half and then in half again - without losing the essence. Apply that to the swollen prose of a bulky novel and you might reveal a beautiful work.

Let us not write at a loose rambling rate, in hope the world will wink at all our faults.

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

The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.

The best advice on writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for every word you can cut.'

Writing a picture book is like writing 'War and Peace' in Haiku.

The point of good writing is knowing when to stop.