If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.

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.

Health care and education are too important NOT to be left to the free market.

Stories are our gifts to a world that doesn't see us.

I love to decorate a room - from the furniture to the objects to the books.

There's something so showy about desperation, it takes hard wits to see it's a grandiose form of funk.

People know what I'm doing.

I'm a perfectionist; there's always something we need to improve upon, and I think that's a really healthy model for artistic growth and progressing. I'm not ready for a masterpiece.

My best efforts were some modern things that looked like very lousy Matisses. Thank God I had the sense to realize they were lousy, and leave Paris.

Harmony is the inner cadence of contentment we feel when the melody of life is in tune.

I don't use specific brands really. It's just that for my skin, I need as high an SPF factor as I can get my hands on. That's the only rule.

My dad talked a good game. [I'm as a] child got only the World Series on the radio.