Matthew Vaughn Quotes

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

I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.

Literature is not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological analysis. It's made of words.

Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.

When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time.'

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

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

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

Ultimately, it's about the quality of the writing whatever style you are writing.

Words are the basic tools, if you are a writer. But why? Why do you choose one set of tools rather than another?

I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

My favorite writers have been those who've said things well.

Prose talks and poetry sings.

There are people who believe in an absolutely transparent prose; with every respect for clarity of expression, I don't.

They put it on the page because it sounded good or it looked good or they read it in a book somewhere that this is how you structure a script or something, and they just don't get it. It's surprising.

A novelist can get by on story, but the poet has nothing but the words.

I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page.

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.

The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they'd word something or how they'd inflect it.

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

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

For purposes of marketing, writers are designated as poets, novelists, or something else. But writing is about matchmaking, an attempt to marry sensations with apt words.

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.