“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

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

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American author and humorist 1835–1910

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Context: I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.

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“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944) British writer and literary critic

sic
On the Art of Writing: Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913–1914 http://www.bartleby.com/190/
Often misattributed, e.g. to Hemingway, Faulkner, and others, or shortened to 'Kill your darlings.' source http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/should-you-kill-your-babies

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“Writing anything, it sorta starts the way you'd build a castle at the beach. You're just taking your hands and you're mounting up sand.”

Aaron Sorkin (1961) American screenwriter, producer, playwright

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“An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

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“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

Also attributed to Ernest Hemingway and others; the earliest definite occurrence of this yet found in research for Wikiquote is by Maya Angelou, who stated it in Conversations With Maya Angelou (1989) edited by Jeffrey M. Elliot:
I think it's Alexander Pope who says, "Easy writing is damn hard reading," and vice versa, easy reading is damn hard writing
The statement she referred to is most probably:
You write with ease, to show your breeding,
But easy writing's curst hard reading
Clio's Protest, or the Picture Varnished (written 1771, published 1819) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Disputed

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