To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.

The best propaganda omits rather than invents

— Mason Cooley

All progress in literary style lies in the heroic resolve to cast aside accretions and exuberances, all the conventions of a past age that…

— Havelock Ellis

It is difficult to believe that even idiots ever succumbed to such transparent contradictions, to such gaudy processions of mere counter-words, to so vast…

— H. L. Mencken

“There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg.…

— Ernest Hemingway

The ignoramus crow of "love it or leave it" omits other viable options, such as staying and changing it.

— Anonymous

One can only continue to expect to be read if one omits everything that is unimportant.

— Albert Einstein

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg.…

— Ernest Hemingway

A writer must face up to the test of reality, including political reality, and that can't be done if he keeps his distance. A…

— Gunter Grass

Every genuinely literary style, from the high authorial voice to Foster Wallace and his footnotes-within-footnotes, requires the reader to see the world from somewhere…

— Zadie Smith

We should have scant notion of the gardens of these New England colonists in the seventeenth century were it not for a cheerful traveller…

— Alice Morse Earle

But everything written has style. The list of ingredients on the side of a cornflakes box has style. And everything literary has literary style.…

— Ali Smith

“Visst fanns det form och stil i litteraturen, i konsten, i musiken! Det fanns överallt, tyckte han. Allt var i djupare mening en fråga…

— Erik Asklund

Your literary style reflects your personality.

— Louis Auchincloss

“The chief beauty of this book lies not so much in its literary style, or in the extent and usefulness of the information it…

— Jerome K. Jerome

“Literary style is like crystal-ware: the cleaner the wineglass, the brighter the brilliance. As a reader, I agree with those who believe that a…

— Lara Biyuts