Style Quotes

I'll be wearing my high heels, even if I'm up to my knees in mud

Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters; too much speaking in holy tones.

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

I don't like comparing with other clubs. Obviously, we had a different style with Wolves. But I am getting a lot more chances here in Liverpool.

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.

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than any words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.

There are different kinds of humor, some is sarcastic, some introspective. Introspective fit my personality better.

I'm not into fashion, but I like design. I wear the same shoes every day.

I am not a consecutive writer.

The style of an author is a faithful copy of his mind.

Being fresh is more important than having money.

Cock your hat - angles are attitudes.

If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.

Style is such a personal thing; it's your way to be an individual.

Why change? Everyone has his own style. When you have found it, you should stick to it.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

I've never let a rhinestone go unturned

If you can say a thing with one stroke, unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a marchande de plaisir; a decorative litt

It isn't what I do, but how I do it. It isn't what I say, but how I say it, and how I look when I do it and say it.

Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler.

I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can't do it.

The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.

Just get the right syllable in the proper place.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap!

Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it--an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.

We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He [T.S. Eliot] said it came of being bookish, but not reading books enough. One should read all styles thoroughly.

It was never a marketing tool. People say that, but I dress this way for the same reasons I did when I first started doing it. It still comes from a serious place inside of me. I get up in the morning, and I think I just look better a certain way I do my makeup. I want to shine, I want to glitter. I'm not getting up thinking, "Oh, this'll get 'em." And I'm not doing it to make a statement. I'm just doing it to look like Dolly - the Dolly that I know and the Dolly that you know.

To pull off any look, wear it with confidence.

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Where there is no style, there is no slave. Martial Arts mean honestly expressing yourself. No style. No slave.

In stating as fully as I could how things really were, it was often very difficult and I wrote awkwardly and the awkwardness is what they called my style. All mistakes and awkwardness are easy to see, and they called it style.

A good style must have an air of novelty, at the same time concealing its art.

From what I remember, I remember always being a big fan of Kardinal Offishall. He just had that different flow and different flavor. He put himself on the record and that's the type of energy that we love.

I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.

Style is only the frame to hold your thoughts. It is like the sash of a window; if heavy, it will obscure the light.

Style is less the man than the way a man takes himself.

The adjective is the enemy of the noun. Variant: The adjective is the enemy of the substantive.

The grand style follows suit with all great passion. It disdains to please, it forgets to persuade. It commands. It wills.

Submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial style, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust.

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. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.

One should always aim at being interesting, rather than exact.

If y'all fresh to death, then I'm deceased.

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made. Almost no new classics resemble other previous classics. At first people see only the awkwardness. Then they are not so perceptible. When they show so very awkwardly people think these awkwardnesses are the style and many copy them. This is regrettable.

Billy Collins writes lovely poems. Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

It is curious and interesting to notice what an attraction a fussy, mincing, nickel-plated word has for you.

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.

I never could get my hair to do what I wanted it to do, so I started wearing the wigs. It all came from a very serious place. I wanted to look a certain way.

My Caps Lock Key Is Loud!

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory.

My favorite writers have been those who've said things well.

Well, my smile's pretty hard to miss, considering I'm a gal who likes her lipstick-the redder the better.

It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.

I modelled my looks on the town tramp.

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.

The style is the man. Rather say the style is the way the man takes himself; and to be at all charming or even bearable, the way is almost rigidly prescribed. If it is with outer seriousness, it must be with inner humor. If it is with outer humor, it must be with inner seriousness. No other way will do.