What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.

Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft; we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't.

To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.

The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.

The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.

Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.

Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.