David Leavitt Quotes

I have been fighting over commas all my life.

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

I know I have a problem with semi-colon abuse and have written page-long sentences. Nobody needs to be reading page-long sentences, at least not written by me.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.

I don't know if I officially proofread my father's book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

I found a great many pieces of punctuation and typography lying around dormant when I came along - and I must say I had a good time using them.

I'm pretty sure when I need a comma; I'm not so sure about a semicolon.

Write one good clean sentence and put a period at the end of it. Then write another one.

Once I start writing, I am a huge reviser. To me writing is revising. I probably turn over every sentence that I write, to see if I have the rhythm right. That's why my first drafts take a really long time.

To write you have to be able to know how to put words together.

I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.

I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing.

If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.

I am gennerally understood tho I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons etc.

I like all things grammatical, and I had already written several books about parts of speech, and even the alphabet, so everything that makes up a sentence and even a word was covered except for punctuation.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page.

I think in any writing you're paying attention to detail.

I'm a language-oriented writer who proceeds sentence by sentence.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

I'd like to take a course in writing. I'm not the best writer in the world. I'd like to write more neatly, even though people don't send many handwritten letters these days.

I spent the entire morning inserting a comma; I spent the whole afternoon removing it again.

In my experience, copy editors, like the stalwart staff I've worked with and learned from in my 34 years at 'TIME,' are linguistic conservatives - the keepers of the flame ignited by the Strunk-White 'Elements of Style,' published in full in 1957 and chosen by 'TIME' as one of the 100 most influential nonfiction books of the past century.