I never think of him as a scholar assaulting me with how much he knows, but as a teacher eager to share a lifelong passion for the subject.
Writing can be taught or learned in the vacuum. We must say to students in every area of knowledge: "This is a how other people have written about this subject. Read it; study it; think about it. You...
Vulnerability has a strength of its own.
Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
It's no fun to think about infinity and no cinche to write about it. Again, it helps to look for some human link.
Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has...
Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.
I almost always urge people to write in the first person. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.
Mind in language are inseparable. If we violate our language we violate ourselves.
Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be...
If a philosophical writer cannot be followed, the difficulty of his subject can be placed only in mitigation of his offense, not in condonation of it. There are too many expert witnesses on the other...
I like Catch-22, Gravity’s Rainbow and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, for instance, because the authors of those three surrealistic novels—Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon and Robert Pirsig—i...
Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Thi...
Editors are licensed to be curious.