IDEA Lab

"You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke."

– Arthur Plotnik

"The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the same as the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."

– Mark Twain

"Remember the waterfront shack with the sign FRESH FISH SOLD HERE. Of course it's fresh, we're on the ocean. Of course it's for sale, we're not giving it away. Of course it's here, otherwise the sign would be someplace else. The final sign: FISH."

– Peggy Noonan

"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."

– William Butler Yeats

"Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole -- so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page."

– Willa Cather

"Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them."

– John Ruskin

"The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat."

– Robert Heinlein

"Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity."

– William Zinsser

"When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest."

– Stephen King

"Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style."

– Matthew Arnold