A clear sentence is no accident.

Less is more.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.

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

Thought is action in rehearsal.

If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

If you treat your characters like people, they'll reward you by being fully developed individuals.

Romance means believing you are worthy of a happy ending.

A man up in front of a judge says "I don't recognise this court." "Why not?" "It's been redecorated since the last time I was here."

Anyone can revolt. It is more difficult silently to obey our own inner promptings, and to spend our lives finding sincere and fitting means of expression for our temperament and our gifts.

I have to submit to much in order to pacify the touchy tribe of poets.

God alone is entirely exempt from all want of human virtues, that which needs least is the most absolute and divine.

No one should be judge in his own case.

I love the idea of rectitude.

I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.