mike's web log/quotes

advice advice computers editing education funny general language laws music politics reading religion science sports technology working writing (all)

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I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
— Blaise Pascal   writing | editing


You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
— Albert Einstein   writing | general | education


The beginning and endings of all human undertakings are untidy, the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.
— John Galsworthy   writing | general


Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
— Gene Fowler   writing | funny


Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant.
— Winston Churchill   writing


I write books to find out about things.
— Rebecca West   writing | education


A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
— Thomas Mann   writing


I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
— Douglas Adams   funny | writing


Don't get too attached to your deathless prose, because the editor will change it. A good editor will improve your writing, but any editor will change it. In this respect editors are the same as dogs; when they see something new, they simply must mark it with their own scent.
— Mike Gunderloy   editing | writing


It is enough for an author to have written something for it to be true, with no proof other than the power of his talent and the authority of his voice.
— Gabriel García Márquez   writing


People studying literature rarely say anything that would be of the slightest use to those producing it.
— Paul Graham   education | writing


One of the things that draws writers to writing is that they can get things right that they got wrong in real life by writing about them.
— Tobias Wolff   writing


With sufficient leisure I can compose excellent impromptus.
— Jean Jacques Rousseau   writing


Let me just say that, if you ever have the choice of putting your words in powerpoint or having them carved into 30-foot high marble, I'd go for the marble.
— Peter Norvig   writing | general


Novels could be called thought experiments. You invent people, you put them in hypothetical situations, and you decide how they will react. The 'proof' of the experiment is if their behaviour seems interesting, plausible, revealing about human nature.
— David Lodge   writing


Author: A fool, who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the generations to come.
— Montesquieu   writing | funny


I'm writing a book. I have all the page numbers down, now I just have to fill in the rest.
— Steven Wright   writing | funny


The software product cycle is a little like a pregnancy I suppose. The first few months are easy, even enjoyable. The last few weeks are mostly discomfort and pain. But then, the product is finally "born", and the world suddenly seems to make sense again.
— Eric Sink   computers | writing


Writers like to think that writing is like Arctic exploration or flying the Atlantic solo but really it's more like golf. You've got to go out and do it every day and live by the results. You can brood over it but in the end you've got to take the club out of the bag and take your swing. You hit the ball to where it wants to go, a series of eighteen small steel cups recessed in turf, on a course that others have traversed before you. You are not the first. You accomplish this by practicing an elegant economy you learned from others and thereby overcoming your damn self-consciousness which trips you up every time.
— Garrison Keillor   writing


Look, you don't get good at writing by deleting adjectives. Writing is difficult and demanding; you can learn to get moderately good at it through decades of practice writing millions of words and critiquing what you've written or having others critique it.
— Geoffrey Pullum   writing | education


Let me tell you what a handy life skill blogging is. It's like telling people you are really awesome at filling things up with water. The literary equivalent of the girl with the great personality.
— Dusty Scott   writing


Steak and puns: a rare medium done well.
— Richard Lederer   language | writing | funny


A writer who fixes too much attention on the correctness of his punctuation, or a reader who does the same, is missing the point: the job of text is to communicate, not satisfy pedantic rule makers.
— Michael Quinion   language | writing


Even on the small scale, when you look at any programming organization, the programmers with the most power and influence are the ones who can write and speak in English clearly, convincingly, and comfortably. Also it helps to be tall, but you can't do anything about that.
— Joel Spolsky   computers | writing


Sometimes I feel guilty about having a weblog. As hobbies go, it's a pretty narcissistic one, and it takes time away from worthy endeavors like paying bills and cleaning the bathroom.
— Becky S   writing


Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?" The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always no, it's time for a new project or a new career.
— Stephen King   writing | advice


This process of digging up the details and learning how things work leads down many side streets and to many dead ends, but is fundamental (I think) to understanding something new. Many times in my books I have set out to write how something works, thinking I know how it works, only to write some test programs that lead me to things that I never knew. I try to convey some of these missteps in my books, as I think seeing the wrong solution to a problem (and understanding why it is wrong) is often as informative as seeing the correct solution.
— W. Richard Stevens   writing | computers | education


I have a blog and a search engine, and I am not afraid to use 'em.
— Michael Bérubé   writing | funny


Anyone who does research knows you have to stay focused on your topic and not go down every interesting avenue you pass, or you will end up wandering aimlessly in attention-deficit limbo.
— Ian Frazier   advice | writing


How often in the past week did anyone offer you something from the heart? It's there in poetry. Forget everything you ever read about poetry, it doesn't matter—poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart.
— Garrison Keillor   writing | general


goodnight you cats
Now is the time for all good cats to go to sleep
there are things to do tomorrow
And you can do them then
but now its time to sleep
and you can dream
— martha the cat   writing | general | advice


The aspects of usage (and mathematics) that really matter are not learned easily and are not learned early.
— Geoff Nunberg   language | writing


The fine (and gross) points of literacy—spelling, punctuation, grammar—elude the vast majority of the Internet's users. To believe that J. Random Users will suddenly and en masse learn to spell and punctuate—let alone accurately categorize their information according to whatever hierarchy they're supposed to be using—is self-delusion of the first water.
— Cory Doctorow   writing


The use of more than one exclamation point side-by-side, in any context (except comics), is a sign of mental insanity, a marketing degree from the University of Phoenix Online, or both.
— Rory Blyth   writing | funny


A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.
— Samuel Johnson   writing | advice


Here's a good rule of thumb: For every spelling error you make, your apparent IQ drops by 5 points.
— John Scalzi   advice | writing


If it's crap, just change it.
— Testy Copy Editors   writing | editing | advice


Some people have a way with words, others not have way.
— Steve Martin [attr]   writing | funny


I would have to say that most instructions I come across are unimportant and some are harmful. Most instructions I get about software development process, I would say, would be harmful if I believed them and followed them. Most software process instructions I encounter are fairy tales, both in the sense of being made up and in the sense of being cartoonish. Some things that look like instructions, such as "do not try this at home" or "take out the safety card and follow along," are not properly instructions at all, they are really just ritual phrases uttered to dispel the evil spirits of legal liability.
— James Bach   writing | general


Better to insist on clarity of thought and fight bad style, than to fight little battles over bad usage.
— Erin McKean   writing | editing


McKean's Law: Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.
— Erin McKean (also cited as Hartman's Law of Prescriptive Retaliation)   language | editing | writing | laws


The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
— Samuel Johnson   writing


Don't send a comma to do a period's job.
— "David"   writing | editing


Documentation should be treated like any other requirement-estimated, prioritized, and planned for accordingly. In other words, don't blindly create documentation simply because it makes you feel comfortable; instead do it because it adds value.
— Scott Ambler   computers | writing


The more writers you meet, the more you think that writers are cranks, weirdos, no-hopers waiting to get invited out to dinner. As a group, writers are not big, powerful people. They look it, perhaps, because of their books, but who are they? I have great regard for them, but the average person doesn't give a shit one way or the other.
— Paul Theroux   writing


The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
— Walter Bagehot   writing | reading


The designer of a new system must not only be the implementor and the first large-scale user; the designer should also write the first user manual. ... If I had not participated fully in all these activities, literally hundreds of improvements would never have been made, because I would never have thought of them or perceived why they were important.
— Donald Knuth   computers | writing


If proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.
— Elmore Leonard   writing | editing


Any sentence containing the phrase the media will be an overbroad generalization, probably to score political points. On the left, the media are faceless tools of corporate interests, narcotizing the public into acceptance of mindless bourgeois-consumerist oppression. On the right the media are Marxist subversives undermining religion and morality by narcotizing the public into a porno-atheistical torpor.
— John McIntyre   politics | writing


The perfect website is exactly one page, the one the visitor wants. But nearly every page on the web is about changing your mind—"There's more over here!"
— Paul Ford   computers | writing | editing


Because novels don't get yanked out of the front of the brain, they can't be bullied into existence by increased focus or a Calvinist work ethic. A lot of what you need is in that great junkshop of memory and experience and emotion that's located in the back of the mind, and it's a place that can't be systematized, made orderly. You can't go in there looking for one thing and hope to find it. All you can do is browse, see what looks interesting, hold it up to the dim light and ask yourself what its relevance might be to the task at hand.
— Richard Russo   writing


Like many people, I started blogging out of an urgent need to procrastinate.
— Alex Ross   writing | funny


Why don't you go read about it and write a blog entry summarizing what you've learned?
— Raymond Chen   writing | advice


Documentation is necessary, but users do NOT want to read it. If your users are asking you for more documentation, the lack of documentation is not really the problem. Your application is too complicated.
— Scott Watermasysk   computers | writing


Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time ... The wait is simply too long.
— Leonard Bernstein   writing | advice


In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
— Paul Dirac   writing | science | language


Some innocent people are under the impression that writers prepare their manuscripts correctly, as the articles appear in the paper. Not so, my son. In many cases, if an article should appear as originally written, the author would refuse to father it and never make another effort. But they must be encouraged, and so their productions are trimmed up in the office and made presentable.
— Unknown, as printed in the Arizona Daily Star, May 21, 1882   writing | editing


There is an inherent and pervasive bias in pure-text communication which makes statements intended to be good-humoured sound sophomoric, makes statements which were intended to be friendly sound smarmy, makes statements which were intended to be enthusiastic sound brash, makes statements intended to be helpful sound condescending, makes statements which were intended to be precise and accurate sound brusque and pedantic, makes statements which were intended to be positive sound neutral, and makes statements which were intended to be neutral seem downright hostile. [...] Writing is hard.
— Eric Lippert   writing | language


Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.
— Alvin Toffler   writing | editing | language


"Does this break a rule?" is the first question and "Does it work?" is the second question. If "Does it work" outweighs "Does it break a rule," then it's OK to break the rule.
— Merrill Perlman   writing | editing | advice


My opinion after 40-odd (and some of them were very odd) years of teaching is that good writing can't be taught, though it can be learned.
— John Lawler   writing | education


Not writing is not a useful way of expressing your ideas. Waiting for perfect is a lousy strategy.
— Seth Godin   writing


I say: LOOK, if perceived norms did not exist it would not be possible to mark a text as departing from norms, it is not possible for the texture of a text to be different, to be perceived as original, without marking itself off from norms by departing from them.
— Helen DeWitt   writing | editing


Dictionaries are the second-to-last refuge of scoundrels.
— Phillip Blanchard   writing | editing


Hierarchical and sequential structures, especially popular since Gutenberg, are usually forced and artificial. Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged—people keep pretending they can make things hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can't.
— Ted Nelson   computers | writing | general


People think that you have these things called ideas and that writing is a matter of imposing them on the subject material, whereas it's only in the writing that I discover what it is that I think.
— Anthony Lane   writing


The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. It turns out that the perfect state of mind to edit your novel is two years after it's published, ten minutes before you go on stage at a literary festival. At that moment every redundant phrase, each show-off, pointless metaphor, all of the pieces of dead wood, stupidity, vanity, and tedium are distressingly obvious to you.
— Zadie Smith   writing | editing


Good writing is good because of what words are not there rather than what words are.
— "Inept writer"   writing


Muphrey's Law: a) if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written; (b) if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book; (c) the stronger the sentiment expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the fault. (d) any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.
— John Bangsund, a variant (one of several) of Hartman's Law of Prescriptive Retaliation   laws | editing | writing


Commas are the single worst thing about being an editor. How can such a tiny little piece of punctuation cause so much time-sucking anguish?
— L. J. Sellers   editing | writing


The hardest thing about writing is getting yourself into a state of not not writing.
— Matthew Baldwin   writing | funny


Purists will fret, but they enjoy that. It gives their lives meaning.
— John McIntyre   language | general | writing | editing


Semicolons are like advanced positions in the kama sutra: not for everyone, and certainly not to be attempted by folks who don't have a grasp, so to speak, of the basics.
— Brett Zalkan   writing


Truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor.
— David Benioff   general | writing | editing


It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.
— Josh Olson   writing | editing


That's the nice thing about historical fiction. The facts fit my needs.
— Michael Covarrubias (wishydig)   funny | writing


Reading other people's raw copy is like looking at your grandmother naked.
— Rafael Alvarez   editing | writing


Writers don't always know what they mean—that's why they write.
— John Lahr   writing


The way to avoid needless bad choices in the grammatical structure of your writing is not to learn a short list of things you must always avoid; it's to be sensitive to what's a good idea and what's a bad idea, on a basis of knowing the difference.
— Geoffrey Pullum   writing


[T]he biggest reason we write unclearly is our ignorance of how others read our writing. What we write always seems clearer to us than it does to our readers, because we can read into it what we want readers to get out of it. And so instead of revising our writing to meet their needs, we send it off as soon as it meets ours.
— Joseph M. Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace   writing


Here is a thing to carve in pokerwork and hang over your typewriter. "No one will ever complain because you have made something too easy to understand."
— Tim Radford   writing


[Strunk and White's] larger rules are something you could never disagree with: "Omit needless words." If you knew which words were needless, you would not need the advice.
— Ben Zimmer   writing | editing


One likes to think that literature has the power to render comprehensible different kinds of unhappiness. If it can't do that, what's it good for?
— Elif Batuman   general | writing


Writing manuals is a very special and privileged task in a computer company, for in the process of writing them you are forced to go over every detail of the hardware and software the company sells in an attempt to make it understandable and usable in our extremely broad customer base. In the process a conscientious writer will discover nearly every good and bad feature of the system, and can provide valuable feedback to the designers and implementers.
— Jef Raskin   writing | computers


[Creative writing can be taught] about the same way golf can be taught. A pro can point out obvious flaws in your swing.
— Kurt Vonnegut   writing


It's always been incredibly challenging for me to put pen to page, because writing, at its heart, is a solitary pursuit, designed to make people depressoids, drug addicts, misanthropes, and antisocial weirdos (see every successful writer ever except Judy Blume).
— Mindy Kaling   writing

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