Arthur Quiller-Couch
English novelist, essayist, poet, and editor
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Style, for example, is not — can never be — extraneous Ornament. ... In this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: 'Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.'
—Arthur Quiller-Couch, English novelist, essayist, poet, and editor, The Art of Writing, 1916
Posted on October 15, 2003 at 9:33 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
This then is Style. As technically manifested in Literature it is the power to touch with ease, grace, precision, any note in the gamut of human thought or emotion. But essentially it resembles good manners. It comes of endeavouring to understand others, of thinking for them rather than for yourself — of thinking, that is, with the heart as well as the head. It gives rather than receives; it is nobly careless of thanks or applause, not being fed by these but rather sustained and continually refreshed by an inward loyalty to the best.
—Arthur Quiller-Couch, English novelist, essayist, poet, and editor, The Art of Writing, 1916
Posted on October 13, 1999 at 6:10 PM
|
