You should make it hard on yourself to write so you’re easier to read.
Interpretation
Strive for clarity in writing through rigorous effort.
Fran Lebowitz suggests that the effort put into making writing challenging for oneself will result in clearer and more accessible writing for the reader. By confronting and overcoming difficulties in the writing process, the writer sharpens their ability to communicate effectively, ultimately benefiting the audience.
In practice
In a workshop on writing techniques, this quote could inspire aspiring authors to refine their craft.
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.
Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word - politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.
I must take issue with the term 'a mere child,' for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult.
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.
A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.
In an effort to create a culture within my classroom where students feel safe sharing the intimacies of their own silences, I have four core principles posted on the board that sits in the front of my class, which every student signs at the beginning of the year: read critically, write consciously, speak clearly, tell your truth.
Yeah, I'm a thrill seeker, but crikey, education's the most important thing.
A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead.
Competitive sports may be where exercise becomes 'fun' for children who are good at it, but for those who are less talented, it is where exercise becomes not only physically demanding but also emotionally painful and socially humiliating.
There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
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