Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.

Good writing is lean and confident.

There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.

Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.

Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.

Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content; the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.

I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.