“Instead of announcing what you are about to tell is interesting, make it so.”
“Rather, very, little, pretty -- these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one, and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then. ”
“Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason.”
“Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.”
“...when a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor.”
“Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable.”
“I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively, instead of skeptically and dictatorially.”