Books Quote by Jonathan Swift

Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose.

— Steven Pinker

“If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic....Authors arrive at…

— Toni Morrison

When we read, we are doing more than delectating words on a page stories, characters, images, notions. We are communing with the mind of…

— Martin Amis

In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture.…

— Anton Chekhov

The object of Literature is to instruct, to animate, or to amuse.

— George Henry Lewes

Writers themselves benefit from all helpful information about their task and methods. Readers, in turn, can have both their understanding and appreciation of literature…

— Leland Ryken

I try to use short sentences, short paragraphs and short chapters to keep the reader's interest.

— Nelson DeMille

“Stylish scholars, my colleagues told me, express complex ideas clearly and precisely; produce elegant, carefully crafted sentences; convey a sense of energy, intellectual commitment,…

— Helen Sword

A lot of my work is about text taken to the point of abstraction.

— Glenn Ligon

I love seeing the light go on in aspiring writers' eyes when you point out ways to improve their prose or their story -…

— F. Paul Wilson

When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw…

— Anne Lamott

“Exposition is a mode of thought, a method of learning, and a means of expression. Almost all of the characteristics we associate with mature…

— Neil Postman