“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

—  Mark Twain

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words." by Mark Twain?
Mark Twain photo
Mark Twain 637
American author and humorist 1835–1910

Related quotes

Michael Palin photo

“The use of the word "just" by an Australian means that whatever it is you have to do, it will not be easy, as in "Just pull that sword out of the stone" or "Just split that atom."”

Michael Palin (1943) British comedian, actor, writer and television presenter

Full Circle with Michael Palin (1997)

Dorothy Day photo

“The cross is there, of course, but "in the cross is joy of spirit." And love makes all things easy.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

On Pilgrimage (1948)
Context: We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter. A certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life. A family needs work as well as bread. Property is proper to man. We must keep repeating these things. Eternal life begins now. "All the way to heaven is heaven, because He said, "I am the Way." The cross is there, of course, but "in the cross is joy of spirit." And love makes all things easy.

James Anthony Froude photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Patti Smith photo

“Freedom is… the right to write the wrong words.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

Gene Fowler (1890–1960) American journalist

Attributed without citation in Janice R. Matthews et al. (2000) Successful Scientific Writing. p. 53
Sometimes attributed to Douglas Adams.

Murray Walker photo
William Saroyan photo

“All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Three Times Three (1936)

William Hazlitt photo

“It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that requires more precision, and, if I may so say, purity of expression, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use; it is not to throw words together in any combinations we please, but to follow and avail ourselves of the true idiom of the language. To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes… It is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express: it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it, out of eight or ten words equally common, equally intelligible, with nearly equal pretensions, it is a matter of some nicety and discrimination to pick out the very one the preferableness of which is scarcely perceptible, but decisive.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Familiar Style" (1821)
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Dorothy L. Sayers photo

Related topics