William Lewis Safir Quotes
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Do not put statements in the negative form. And don't start sentences with a conjunction. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do. Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all. De-accession euphemisms. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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To 'know your place' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say 'stay in your place' or 'hang on to your place', because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place - a feel for one's own position in the control room-is useful in gauging what you should try to do.
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Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
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To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own.
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
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I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.
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As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
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A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
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If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.
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The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
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One difference between French appeasement and American appeasement is that France pays ransom in cash and gets its hostages back while the United States pays ransom in arms and gets additional hostages taken.
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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In dealing with Syria's dictator...only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria's proxies; suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus.
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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.