Georges Simenon Quotes

I like contemporary, bare-boned writing. I don't like having the language that I barely understand get in the way of me interpreting it over to an audience. It's this barrier that I don't want to have to attack.

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose.

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

You can't write about people out of textbooks, and you can't use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

The older I get, the more I seek to use a plain prose style, concentrating more on story.

It's so easy to use tired, shopworn figures of speech. I love using long, fancy words but have learned - mostly from writing my biography of Winston Churchill - that short, strong words work better. I am ever-vigilant against the passive and against jargon, both of which are so insidious.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

I've been accused of being a minimalist writer. I don't like a lot of verbiage in there.

Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark; when high and learned ones do only pierce the air.

Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.

If you want to communicate with the American public, the literature tells you you've got to be talking at about a sixth-grade, seventh-grade level.

I love the right words. I think economy and precision of language are important.

Why say 'utilize' when you can say 'use'?

I am not a great fan of serious, heavy writing. I prefer simple, short sentences, light on prose.

It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

Do but take care to express yourself in a plain, easy Manner, in well-chosen, significant and decent Terms, and to give a harmonious and pleasing Turn to your Periods: study to explain your Thoughts, and set them in the truest Light, labouring as much as possible, not to leave them dark nor intricate, but clear and intelligible.

Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.

The shorter and the plainer the better.

Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn't about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way.

Anybody can have ideas-the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.