Those who run to long words are mainly the unskillful and tasteless; they confuse pomposity with dignity, flaccidity with ease, and bulk with force.

Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.

The purpose of paragraphing is to give the reader a rest. The writer is saying . . . : Have you got that? If so, I'll go to the next point.

Be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.

Anyone who finds himself putting down several commas close to one another should reflect that he is making himself disagreeable.

After all, it is an ancient and valuable right of the English people to turn their nouns into verbs when they are so minded.

We tell our thoughts, like our children, to put on their hats and coats before they go out.

It need hardly be said that shortness is a merit in words.

Those who are addicted to the phrase "to use a vulgarism" expect to achieve the feat of being at once vulgar and superior to vulgarity.

The obvious is better than obvious avoidance of it.

The writer's Queen Victoria is his public, and he would do well to keep a bust of the old Queen on his desk with the legend "We are not amused" hanging from it.

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.

What if it’s a shy fish? Is that a 'coy koi?' What? Don’t hate me because I’m asking the important questions.

You will not be the same person coming out of a relationship as you were going into it.

Acting can be very selfish and all-consuming.

Guilt: I'm sorry. I made a mistake. Shame: I'm sorry. I am a mistake.

An action choreographer is kind of like a dance choreographer. You choreograph the moves and you let the director, cinematographer take into positioning their cameras.

When my mood was high, I seemed normal, even buoyant. I felt smarter. I had secrets. I could see God in a light bulb

It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience)

But remember, I am no politician, and no seer into souls.

Today it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million people.