Joseph Addison Quotes

The following are the universally fundamental laws of literary communication: 1. one must have something to communicate; 2. one must have someone to whom to communicate it; 3. one must really communicate it, not merely express it for oneself alone. Otherwise it would be more to the point to remain silent.

I thought clarity of communication was the most important thing in writing, and if you really cared about getting your idea across, you would say it in the most straightforward way possible. Later, in college and grad school, I came to realize that language is a technology like any other, and that it's always evolving - clarity of expression is always evolving.

You don't have to say everything to say something.

I never write with any kind of message, and I don't think that this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger' has a message in the capital M form of the word but I do hope it makes people ask themselves questions about what they think.

The only other thing which I think is important is: Don't write a book or start a book with the expectation of communicating a message in a very important way.

I seem to have a natural tendency to want to share my own observations and feelings with other people, and writing seems to be the way I'm best equipped to do that.

I never wrote my books especially for children.

I want to offer a word of encouragement to authors: You have to feel called to the message of your book enough that you want people to get that message. When you get to that place, your passion goes through the roof, and then the other stuff happens.

I'm not a writer just to be a writer. I want to say something that really needs expressing.

If you can't communicate and talk to other people and get across your ideas, you're giving up your potential.

To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.

We are all writers and readers as well as communicators with the need at times to please and satisfy ourselves with the clear and almost perfect thought.

To write well it is first necessary to have something to say.

Most of the pleasure of making a book would go if it held nothing to be shared by other people. I would write for a few dozen people, and sometimes it seems that I do so, but I would not write for no-one.

You are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

I have a theory you shouldn't write a book unless you have something to say.

Preaching and writing - it's the same. Whether I'm writing to speak or writing to be read in a book, it's the same thing.

What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering--that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.

I've lost my writing skills since college. I couldn't write a book. It would take a long time.

Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

I have spent 20 years writing these books. Had I wanted to say men are beasts and scream, that takes 30 seconds.

You have to be able to communicate in life and probably schools underemphasize that. If you can't talk to people or write, you're giving up your potential.

Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.

Once the grammar has been learned, writing is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.