Michael Dirda Quotes

Writing is sometimes a balancing act between keeping things easily readable and being accurate.

Jesus made everything so simple and we have made it so complicated. He spoke to the people in short sentences and everyday words, illustrating His messages with never-to-be forgotten stories.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

The single most important lesson of effective communication is this: Focus on clarity. Concentrate on precisions. Don’t worry about constructing beautiful sentences. Beauty comes from meaning, not language. Accuracy is the most effective style of all.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

Making noise is easy; making stuff people understand is an easy thing to do.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

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

I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.

I never want to dumb it down. If there's any simplification, it's just a simplification to make sure that the reader understands the point that the character is trying to make.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

Directing my own writing, I see that I talk way too much, and everything can happen much sooner, with much less said about it.

Sometimes it is necessary to make things clearer than the truth.

I labor to be brief, and manage to be obscure.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

It is easy to be accurate if you have the freedom to be complicated, and it is very easy to be simple if you have the freedom to shade the truth. What's hard is to be simple and very accurate, and that takes work to figure out what are the simple truths that are going to sustain your case.