Week 15 Theme #2

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. 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. Most editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.

Ever since I was really little, I've had characters that were in my mind.
A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream. Always the cat remains a little beyond the limits we try to set for him in our blind folly.
If you had characters in modern fiction say the same things as they're driving down the street in an Oldsmobile they'd sound ludicrous! It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.Any truth is better than indefinite doubt. Either the law exists, or it does not.

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination. all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you
You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

Easy reading is damn hard writing. I don't think I could have written what I did any earlier.
I had to live this long, have the experiences I've had, to create what I do. I knew I wanted to write for years, but I had to be ready so I wouldn't blow it. If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. Your life is yours and yours alone. Rise up and live it. Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.