I love good quotes. Here are a few I’ve come across recently that inspired me or made me think. Feel free to share, pin, etc.

Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

~HENRY WATSON FOWLER

If you wait for inspiration to write; you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter. ~ Dan Poynter

“The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.” ~Ezra Pound

Pound wrote in the 1920s, remember. Apparently, this complaint isn’t new.

“To be clear is the first duty of a writer; to charm and to please are graces to be acquired later.” Brander Matthews

Professor Matthews, by the way, is the critic who raised Mark Twain’s ire by praising the work of James Fennimore Cooper. He is quoted in Twain’s famous critical essay of Cooper’s writing.

“Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them, Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.” ~Truman Capote

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