Clever Writing Quotes

#1. Ryan Stout, a straight-arrow-looking kind of guy, shocks the crowd into laughter with his inventive interplay between innocence and a jarringly twisted point of view. He goes from loony to weirdly logical. With him, it's more than clever writing; his comedy is based on clear and clever thinking.

Ben Fong-Torres

#2. If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?

Brian Kernighan

#3. Today I am amused, and I haven't seen anyone yet.

Aleksandra Ninkovic

#4. I think some authors suffer from a need to try to prove that they're clever and educated. I try not to suffer from that. I would rather sacrifice my own narrative in the exercise of writing a biography. So I'm not worried about whether I'm clever.

Amity Shlaes

#5. People forget how outcast 'They Might Be Giants' can be. They have a reputation for writing really deft, funny, clever melodies, and they also make a lot of music for kids, which is terrific, but when you see them in concert, they can rock the house.

John Hodgman

#6. I have read books that are so cliched and lazy, my eyes have bled. But I also have read books marketed under the chick-lit umbrella that are so honest, clever and gritty that I've wanted to give up writing and paint walls instead.

Jojo Moyes

#7. How I would hate the reputation of being clever at writing but stupid and useless at everything else! I would rather be stupid at both than to choose to employ my good qualities as badly as that.

Michel De Montaigne

#8. Mike Ruby, a writer in the magazine's Business section, used to call Newsweek writing f - k-style journalism: Flash (the lead), Understanding (the billboard - why is this story important), Clarification (tell the details of the story), and Kicker (bringing it all together with a clever ending).

Lynn Povich

#9. You may think me crude, and probably I am crude, but I am not so crude as I was, for I am clever enough to see that the girl of nineteen who thought herself a genius was only an unusual girl writing her heart out.

Mary MacLane

#10. Now it's virtually impossible to write a game that successfully provides challenge and frustration, and that's a shame. We are going to lose something that makes scientists, that makes doers, that makes hard-minded, witty, clever people, and I worry that those people aren't being made these days.

Patrick Rothfuss

#11. I hadn't read or heard a lot about [Tom] Wolfe until I read this script, and in that way I think it was really clever to write a piece about him instead of Max Perkins,[Ernest] Hemingway, [John] Fitzgerald, or others that people have strong opinions of already.

Jude Law

#12. Elvis Costello's song writing is so peerless and individualistic. It's storytelling and it's deeply intelligent and clever.

Chip Esten

#13. I've determined the ideal job for me is one where I can write clever essays about my life and my employer will give me enough money not only to live a comfortable existence, but also to buy many, many new pairs of shoes.

Jen Lancaster

#14. I love 'Girls.' The writing is so clever. I think Lena Dunham is a genius. I can't believe she writes it, directs it and stars in it. It's really exciting that a young woman has been able to achieve all of that.

Helen George

#15. [You write out of the] desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, etc., etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive and a strong one.

George Orwell

#16. Now you're discovering the great secret of great writing: one line of true feeling is worth a thousand pages of clever thinking.

Menna Van Praag

#17. People talk about writing convincing teenagers like it's a really clever thing to do, but it comes incredibly naturally to me. Which, of course, is slightly a worry.

Meg Rosoff

#18. If you're going to have a book full of clever people and nobody ever jokes, it's just not going to ring true to the reader. That said, humor writing is the hardest kind of writing there is.

Patrick Rothfuss

#19. I would love for people to think that I am as quick, clever, smart and heroic as the characters that I write, but those characters are characters.

Aaron Sorkin

#20. Mr. Fulbright hasn't said anything new or interesting or clever in five years; his intellectual well dried up the day after Walter Lippmann stopped writing his regular column.

Spiro T. Agnew

#21. It is a most remarkable thing. I sat down with the full intention of writing something clever and original; but for the life of me I can't think of anything clever and original
at least, not at this moment.

Jerome K. Jerome

#22. I'm very clever
at
hiding poems
perhaps more
clever than I
am
at
writing
them.

Charles Bukowski

#23. I like to believe my suspense novels marry the strong characters from my romance writing past, with the twisty, clever plots of my mystery writing present.

Lisa Gardner

#24. That's writing, I suppose - dozens of decisions about what's in, what's out, what goes with what, what's clever but not honest, what's so honest that it's a truism, what's meretricious - and all just to produce one short sketch.

David Mitchell

#25. There was a period when STP and I weren't making music - we weren't getting along very good at all. But I had my studio, so I was writing and recording a lot of music. But something told me not to put it out. It was all stream of consciousness; it was clever, but it didn't really have substance.

Scott Weiland

#26. An exquisite invention this, Worthy of Love's most honeyed kiss,
This art of writing billet-doux
In buds, and odors, and bright hues! In saying all one feels and thinks In clever daffodils and pinks; In puns of tulips; and in phrases, Charming for their truth, of daisies.

Leigh Hunt

#27. A clever trick does not a concept make.

Larry Brooks

#28. An education that does not teach clear, coherent writing cannot provide our world with thoughtful adults; it gives us instead, at the best, clever children of all ages.

Richard Mitchell

#29. Literary modernism kind of grew out of a sense that, "Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself? I know! I'll write Ulysses."

Philip Pullman

#30. Women writers make for rewarding (and efficient) lovers. They are clever liars to fathers and husbands; yet they never hold their tongues too long, nor keep ardent typing fingers still.

Roman Payne

#31. One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

Mark Twain

#32. The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.

Criss Jami