Gerhard Richter Quotes

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

I've always been very aware of what I'm saying, but I'm also aware of what you're saying. I always want to make sure that my point is clear.

It's no use of talking unless people understand what you say.

I think structure is so deep in us. We put it in stories we tell our friends or in emails we write. We want it. It's how we create meaning.

I speak English my way, but people understand it. You can understand everything I say, and that's the most important thing.

I think any great culture is born out of transparent, authentic communication. You almost can't overcommunicate. You can try, and you might think, 'Oh, do I really have to say this again?' And the answer is yes.

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

We always speak well when we manage to be understood.

Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.

Communication works for those who work at it.

If we are understood, more words are unnecessary; if we are not likely to be understood, they are useless.

Accept complete responsibility both for understanding and for being understood.

It doesn't matter how much we know, it matters how clearly others can understand what we know.

A thought must tell at once, or not at all.

I am always willing to run some hazard of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous; and, after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted.

The principal function of form is to advance our understanding. It is the organization of a piece which helps the listener to keep the idea in mind, to follow its development, its growth, its elaboration, its fate.

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

Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.

How well we communicate is determined not by how well we say things but how well we are understood.

Say it clear, and it will be beautiful.

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing — to be clear.

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.

Respect is important, if someone has a very clear vision of what they want, as long as they find a way to communicate it, a respectful way…

Form is all we have to help us cope with fundamentally chaotic facts and assaults. Formulating something is a great start. I trust form, trust my feeling or capacity to find the right form for something. Even if that is only by being well organized. That too is form.

I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.