A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.

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.

A clear sentence is no accident.

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

I learned to cope with my needs for attention by creating my own private personal rituals to make myself feel special.

Thinking carries a moral imperative. The searcher for truth must be ready to obey truth without reservation or it will elude him.

When you feel pain, you know that you are still alive.

Literature is the denunciation of the times in which one lives.

I’m all mixed up inside. It’s like—I don’t know—like an ignition of some kind. one minute, I’m fine, and the next I’m losing it.

Singers like her, Patti, Tina Turner, I revere them when I'm in their presence.

I cried over beauty, I cried over pain, and the other time I cried because I felt nothing. I can't help it. I'm just a cliché of myself.

All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.

Tis not where we lie but whence we fell; the loss of Heaven's the greatest pain in Hell.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time - never. These allegations are false.