Sublime

But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.

On Writing Well is a craft book, and its principles haven’t changed since it was written 30 years ago. I don’t know what still newer marvels will make writing twice as easy in the next 30 years. But I do know they won’t make writing twice as good. That will still require plain old hard thinking—what E. B. White was doing in his boathouse—and the

Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is. I

Beware, then, of the long word that’s no better than the short word: “assistance” (help), “numerous” (many), “facilitate” (ease), “individual” (man or woman), “remainder” (rest), “initial” (first), “implement” (do), “sufficient” (enough), “attempt” (try), “referred to as” (called) and hundreds more.

My sentences almost never come out right at first, and I endlessly try to repair them.

Criticism is a serious intellectual act. It tries to evaluate serious works of art and to place them in the context of what has been done before in that medium or by that artist. This doesn’t mean that critics must limit themselves to work that aims high; they may select some commercial product like Law & Order to make a point about American

Another is that the essence of writing is rewriting. Very few writers say on their first try exactly what they want to say.