It has often been said
there’s so much to be read,
you never can cram
all those words in your head.

So the writer who breeds
more words than he needs
is making a chore
for the reader who reads.

That's why my belief is
the briefer the brief is,
the greater the sigh
of the reader's relief is.

And that's why your books
have such power and strength.
You publish with shorth!
(Shorth is better than length.)

When a writer tries to explain too much, he's out of time before he begins.

Someone said a writer should read three times more than he or she writes.

But with today's mammoth papers the poor boobs have to write at ten times the length their subject is worth, and apart from over-padded news we have the curse of modern journalism, the proliferation of the commentary, the background exposition, the in-depth analysis, the "think-piece", all adding up to an indigestible stream of crap which no one wants to read, and no one, to judge by the mechanical repetition and weary rambling, wants to write either.

A writer who writes more than he reads is an amateur.

Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Easy writing makes hard reading.

It takes a heap of loafing to write a book.

He didn't want to please his readers. He wanted to stretch them until they twanged.

[An author is] a fool who, not content with boring everyone around him during his lifetime, insists on boring generations yet to come.

Yes, it's hard to write. But it's harder not to.

Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.