Language Craft Quotes

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

A novel, basically, is writing one sentence — then, without violating the scope of the first one, writing the next sentence.

I believe that writing is an account of the powers of extrication.

Nathaniel Hawthorne once said that easy reading is damn hard writing.

I'm very concerned with questions of language. This is what I think of when I think of myself as a writer: I'm someone who writes sentences and paragraphs. I think of the sentence - not only what it shares but, in a sense, what it looks like. I like to match words not only in a way that convey a meaning, possibly an indirect meaning, but even at times words that have a kind of visual correspondence.

The poets are the standard bearers of language. Their work lives or dies word by word. When I write and can hear a clunky sentence, I try to write up to the poetry that I have recited beforehand.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.

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

The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease & intimacy with the process of writing... It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn't, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

Nothing feels better than constructing a beautiful sentence.

Each character requires different language, and these issues become inseparable. You have all these balls in the air: language, character, narrative. For me, the primary focus must be words, sentences, paragraphs.

Respect the language in which you write. Be kind, develop good vocabulary, and be creative in writing beautiful sentences. Your prose should be your poetry when you write.

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

There is sometimes a feeling in crime fiction that good writing gets in the way of story. I have never felt that way. All you have is language. Why write beneath yourself? It's an act of respect for the reader as much as yourself.

Writing good dialogue is art as well as craft.

Word-carpentry is like any other kind of carpentry: you must join your sentences smoothly.

He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite.

When putting words together is good to do it with nicety and caution, your elegance and talent will be evident if by putting ordinary words together you create a new voice.

I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.

I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way, and you know you're not quite there, and you're redoing it and redoing it, and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard. It's a job of tremendous anxiety for me.

After I quit being a lawyer in '95, I was having a lot of trouble writing. Then I read somewhere that Willa Cather read a chapter of the Bible every day before she started work. I thought, 'Okay, I'll try it.' Before each writing session, I started to read the Bible like a writer, thinking about language, character, and themes.

What I like to do is treat words as a craftsman does his wood or stone or what-have-you, to hew, carve, mold, coil, polish, and plane them into patterns, sequences, sculptures, fugues of sound expressing some lyrical impulse, some spiritual doubt or conviction, some dimly realized truth I must try to reach and realize.

I have a hard time revising sentences, because I spend an inordinate amount of time on each sentence, and the sentence before it, and the sentence after it.