A deadline is a negative inspiration. Still, it is better than no inspiration at all.

- Rita Mae Brown

Our writing tools are also working on our thoughts.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.

- C.W. Ceram

If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well.

- Albert Einstein

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

- Hans Hoffman

Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction.

- Albert Einstein

Truth is eternal. Knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them.

- Madeleine L'Engle

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

- Leonardo da Vinci

The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

- George Bernard Shaw

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I would not brood. I would type a little faster.

- Isaac Asimov

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector.

- Ernest Hemingway

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

- Rudyard Kipling

Most people will not realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.

- Katherine Ann Porter

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

- Ezra Pound

The difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.

- Mark Twain

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

- Mark Twain

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.

- H-G. Wells