Mark Twain Quotes about Writing

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Mark Twain

Writing, Confusing, Easy

As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

Mark Twain

Writing, Doubt, Adjectives

Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 11

If we learned to walk and talk the way we learn to read and write, everyone would limp and stutter.

Mark Twain

Leadership, Writing, Learning

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

Mark Twain

Flower, Writing, Simple

Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.65, Chartwell

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

Mark Twain

Time, Writing, Long

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

Mark Twain

Writing, Light, Ideas

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

Inspirational, Funny, Writing

The public is the only critic whose judgment is worth anything at all.

Mark Twain

Writing, Editors, Criticism

"Life as I Find it".

It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.

Mark Twain

Writing, Benefits, Amusement

Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2532, GENERAL PRESS

I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Mark Twain

Hate, Book, Writing

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.

Mark Twain

Art, Writing, Together

Mark Twain (2016). “The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories”, p.179, Xist Publishing

It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense

Mark Twain

Writing, Nonsense

Mark Twain, Bob Blaisdell (2013). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.84, Courier Corporation

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

Mark Twain

Writing, Exclamation Points, Laughing

Don't look at the world with your hands in your pockets. To write about it you have to reach out and touch it.

Mark Twain

Writing, Hands, Pockets

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop.... I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen.

Mark Twain

Writing, Humble, Vocabulary

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Mark Twain

Book, Writing, Order

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.

Mark Twain

Writing, Achievement, Squandering

Mark Twain (1990). “Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 2: 1867-1868”, p.182, Univ of California Press

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

Mark Twain

Book, Writing, Needs

Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.161, Courier Corporation

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

Mark Twain

Book, Writing, Successful

Letter to H. H. Rogers, 26 - 28 Apr. 1897

there was no crime in unconscious plagiarism; that I committed it everyday, that he committed it everyday, that every man alive on earth who writes or speaks commits it every day and not merely once or twice but every time he open his mouth… there is nothing of our own in it except some slight change born of our temperament, character, environment, teachings and associations

Mark Twain

Teaching, Writing, Character

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.

Mark Twain

Writing, Character, Land

Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

Mark Twain

Inspiration, Writing, Scream

An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency.

Mark Twain

Appreciation, Writing, Compliment

Mark Twain (2015). “The Prince and the Pauper (StoneHenge Classics)”, p.154, StoneHenge Classics

In writing, I shall always confine myself strictly to the truth, except when it is attended with inconvenience.

Mark Twain

Writing, Inconvenience

Mark Twain (1992). “Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 3: 1869”, p.471, Univ of California Press

Whatever you have lived, you can write & by hard work & a genuine apprenticeship, you can learn to write well; but what you have not lived you cannot write, you can only pretend to write it.

Mark Twain

Hard Work, Writing, Apprenticeship

Mark Twain, R. Kent Rasmussen (1997). “The quotable Mark Twain: his essential aphorisms, witticisms & concise opinions”, McGraw-Hill/Contemporary