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.
... bums on the outside, libraries inside.
Where I grew up, learning was a collective activity. But when I got to school and tried to share learning with other students that was called cheating. The curriculum sent the clear message to me that learning was a highly individualistic, almost secretive, endeavor. My working class experience...was disparaged.
In the early 1970s in Atlanta, I attended what had formerly been an all-white school but had become a black school after integration and white flight. Perhaps because of this, the teachers created a curriculum that included a focus on African American literature and history year-round, not just in February.
Be convinced that, if man were able to reach the end without preparatory studies, such studies would not be preparatory but tiresome and utterly superfluous.
One of the greatest pleasures of my life has been that I have never stopped learning about Good Cooking and Good Food
The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
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