I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who... will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There, burying each gloomy thought, each sad reflection in the hearse of dissipation, [we] lost the remembrance of our woes, our c...ruel misfortunes, our agonising sorrows--and graciously permitted them to glide along the stream of reviving comfort, blown by the gentle gale of new born hopes till they reposed in the bosom of oblivion--then--no! 'tis impossible! this style is too great, too sublime to be supported with proper dignity--the sublime and beautiful how charmingly blended!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unl...ike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see... what he describes--countrysides and figures, movements and gestures--how could he have a style, that is originality?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A beautiful sentence is beautiful, and a beautiful flower is beautiful, but their duration is nearly the same--a day, a century. N...othing dies more quickly than a style that is not supported by the solidity of strong thought. It shrivels up like a slackened hide; it falls in a heap like a rotten vine deprived of the tree it entwines. And if someone says that the vine keeps a tree with withered roots from falling down, I would agree. Style is also a force, but its value is that much more quickly diminished when it exhausts itself in preserving from annihilation the fragility which it embraces and sustains.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed t...o me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. The stories are arranged in this order. I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the most important things, to my mind, in English style is word-order. For us, the most emphatic place in a clause or sente...nce is the end. This is the climax; and, during the momentary pause that follows, that last word continues, as it were, to reverberate in the reader's mind. It has, in fact, the last word. One should therefore think twice about what one puts at a sentence-end. But in a German sentence this final position may be reserved, by a most curious grammatical convention, for an infinitive or past participle; or, in a subordinate clause, for the main verb. Thus logical emphasis, unless particularly strong, tends to be sacrificed to mere grammar.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As the style of Faulkner grew out of his rage--out of the impotence of his rage--the style of Hemingway grew out of the depth and ...nuance of his disenchantment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »