Anthony Marra Quotes

Anyone can make an article longer; the skill is keeping it tight and lean.

I write scenes - often quite long scenes - mainly because I still get seduced into writing six lines where one and a half will do.

Tweeting has taught me the discipline to say more with fewer words.

I think in most cases, unless you're writing about a character who is garrulous, you say what you've got to say and then get out. Those little conjunctions, those little turnaround words help you do it. That's the way I like to write: I get rid of things rather than add them.

My sentences tend to be very short and rather spare. I'm more your paragraph kind of gal.

Omit needless words.

Twitter taught me how to become better at writing jokes because it forces you to chip away at all the extraneous words.

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

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

I liked the challenge of writing in a very concise structure in which both meaning and form are important.

You know what writers say about their long books: If I had another year, the book would be half as long.

In a newspaper, you only have so much room. It teaches you the value of getting to the point, of not pampering yourself with your glorious writing. I've always been much more interested in one powerful sentence that stays with you. That's my style.

Vigorous writing is concise.

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

One mistake with beginners in writing is, that they think it important to spin out something long. It is a great deal better not to write more than a page or two, unless you have something to say, and can write it correctly.

I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.

Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.

One tends to write beyond what's needed.

Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins.

People who want to express themselves effectively can learn a lot from the hard-won concision of the copywriter.

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity.

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.