“Poor writing is lazy, careless writing, an attempt to communicate without adequate preparation or care. It is writing replete with passive construction, limp verbs, leaden clichés, mixed metaphors, dangling participles and misplaced modifiers, and other enemies of clear prose.”

“...passive voice is better than writing out a humongous number and taking the risk that your readers' brains will be numb by the time they get to the verb.”

“A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.”

“Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.”

“I think there is no way to write about being alone. To write is to tell something to somebody to communicate to others. . . . Solitude is noncommunication, the absence of others, the presence of a self sufficient to itself.”

“Don't say you're a writer if you're not writing. Even if you're writing, don't call yourself a writer. Say instead, 'I write.' It's the verb that's important, not the noun.”