Murder Your Darlings

To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or two things which Style is not; which have little or nothing to do with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament. You remember, may be, the Persian lover whom I quoted to you out of Newman: how to convey his passion he sought a professional letter-writer and purchased a vocabulary charged with ornament, wherewith to attract the fair one as with a basket of jewels. Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: "Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings."

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. (1863–1944) On the Art of Writing. 1916.

C. S. Lewis on Narrative Lust

I give you C. S. Lewis in "On Stories," at the part where he talks about "narrative lust":

The re-reader is looking not for actual surprises (which can come only once) but for a certain surprisingness…In the only sense that matters the surprise works as well the twentieth time as the first. It is the quality of unexpectedness, not the fact that delights us. It is even better the second time. Knowing that the "surprise" is coming we can now fully relish the fact that this path through the shrubbery doesn’t look as if it were suddenly going to bring us out on the edge of the cliff. So in literature. We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness. The children understand this well when they ask for the same story over and over again, and in the same words. They want to have again the "surprise" of discovering that what seemed Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother is really the wolf. If is better when you know it is coming: free from the shock of actual surprise you can attend better to the intrinsic surprisingness of the peripeteia.

(C. S. Lewis. On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature. 17

H. L. Mencken on Puritans and Puritanism

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

—H.L. Mencken. Prejudices, First Series. 1919.

Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

—H. L. Mencken 1880 - 1956

Rebecca West on Feminism

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist when I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute

Rebecca West

Robert Frost on The Figure a Poem Makes

. . . inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life—not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

Robert Frost

Robert Frost On Education By Poetry

Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, “Why don’t you say what you mean?” We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections—whether from diffidence or some other instinct.

Robert Frost

Chaucer on Plain English

Speketh not in the heigh style, but so playn at this time,
I yow preye, that we may understonde what ye saye.

The Host to the Clerke of Oxenforde. Chaucer. Canterbury Tales. c. 1400.

Mark Twain on Doing Right

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest

Mark Twain

Book, Libraries, and Readers in the Sixth Century

In cuiuscumque maibus libellus iste venerit, rogo et cum grandi humilitate supplico, ut eum et ipse frequentius legat, et aliis ad legendum et ad transscribendum non solum tradat, sed etiam ingerat, ut et de suis et aliorum profectibus duplicem a Domino remunerationem recipiat. Hoc ideo suggero, quia multi sunt, et forte aliqui religiosi, qui plures libros et satis nitidos et pulchre ligatos habere volunt, et eos ita armariis clausos tenent, ut illos nec ipsi legant, nec aliis ad legendum tribuant: ignorantes quod nihil prodest libros habere, et eos propter mundi huius inpedimenta non legere. Liber enim bene coopertus et nitidus, si non legatur, non facit animam nitidam; ille enim qui iugiter legitur, et pro eo quod saepe revolvitur pulcher a foris esse non potest, pulchram animam intus facit.

Caesarius, bishop of Arles, sermo 2 (after ca. 506) by way of Dr. Carol Lanham

Verbing

"First they came for the verbs and I said nothing, for verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns and I speech nothing, for I no verbs."

Attributed to Peter Ellis (via Diane Duane)

Eachard on Plain Language

As if plain words, useful and intelligible instructions, were not as good for an esquire, or one that is in commission from the King, as for him that holds the plough.

John Eachard, 1670. Some Observations Upon
the Answer to an Enquiry into
the Grounds and Occasions
of the Contempt of the Clergy.

Cicero on Human Language

The one point in which we have our very greatest advantage over the brute creation is that we hold converse with one another, and can reproduce our thought in word.

Cicero

Heinlein on Writing

"Writing is nothing to be ashamed of. But do it in private, and wash your hands afterward."

—Robert A. Heinlein

Voltaire on Burning Books

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neghbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

—Voltaire

Strunk on Conciseness

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

—Strunk W., White E.B. The Elements of Style. Third Edition. MacMillan Publishing Company: New York, 1979. p. 23. ISBN: 0-02-418200-1.

Johnson On Writing

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

—Samuel Johnson