Writing Economy Quotes

Less really is more. It's a tendency of beginning writers to want to prove what they're talking about by going too far with description. I think you've got to keep it short, crisp and clean.

Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.

A writer wastes nothing.

The journalism, I was a financial journalist - it's very good training as a writer. You have to write for deadlines; you have a certain economy of phrasing. As a training ground as a writer, it's fantastic. I also think it teaches you to be observant, to listen to people, and gives you an ear of dialogue from doing interviews.

What I take from writers I like is their economy - the ability to use language to very effective ends.

What I take from writers I like is their economy - the ability to use language to very effective ends. The ability to have somebody read something and see it, or for somebody to paint an entire landscape of visual imagery with just sheets of words - that's magical.

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.

It should cause no surprise that anyone so lazy as myself should be economical to the point of miserliness with everything he writes.

I never write "metropolis" for seven cents when I can write "city" and get paid the same.

Column writing is like gas - it fills the available space.

I wouldn't care to speculate about what it is in Westlake's psyche that makes him so good at writing about Parker, much less what it is that makes me like the Parker novels so much. Suffice it to say that Stark/Westlake is the cleanest of all noir novelists, a styleless stylist who gets to the point with stupendous economy, hustling you down the path of plot so briskly that you have to read his books a second time to appreciate the elegance and sober wit with which they are written.