Plain Writing Quotes

My style is colloquial storytelling. It's the way we tell stories to one another - it's not writerly, it's not overdone.

Plate glass... has no beauty of its own. Ideally, you ought not to be able to see it at all, but through it you can see all that is happening outside. That is the equivalent of writing that is plain and unadorned. Ideally, in reading such writing, you are not even aware that you are reading. Ideas and events seem merely to flow from the mind of the writer into that of the reader without any barrier between. I hope that is what is happening when you read this book

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

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

I write in quite a simple way because that's just the way I write. The vocab I use is quite wee. That's just the way I talk.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

I preferred the simplest vocabulary.

I had an instinctive feeling that the people who have little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way... so I wrote in a plain, common-sense way on the things that concerned our people.

Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don't get all writerly: 'He opened the door.' There, it's open.

The best style of writing, as well as the most forcible, is the plainest.

It's so easy to use tired, shopworn figures of speech. I love using long, fancy words but have learned - mostly from writing my biography of Winston Churchill - that short, strong words work better. I am ever-vigilant against the passive and against jargon, both of which are so insidious.

The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

My favourite writers are always great storytellers, like Bruce Springsteen; I adore Bruce Springsteen. I feel like he doesn't beat around the bush, and he doesn't overcomplicate things. He puts things into layman's terms and tells stories that anyone can understand.

Let's say I find a lot of current American fiction too overwritten for my tastes, too self-conscious; I like something that's simpler and more direct. The story is what matters to me. I hope to make it seem real to readers, as if it happened just like this - so I don't want fancy descriptions getting in the way.

Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.

In prose, I think you sometimes have to write in very plain language, where every line may not seem to be so important, though in all writing every line is important.

I've simplified much more in my writing. I say what I've got to say, not in metaphor.

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.

I keep everything very simple. I like telling stories.

I just write like a grown man, because that's what I listen to. I'm not even speaking complicated English... I don't do five-syllable words, I don't do four-syllable words. This is English. Rudimentary English.

I don't use a lot of words unnecessarily.

I don't write with a complex style, I cannot.