A Quote by W. Somerset Maugham
Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
Related Quotes
I can tell you that in my modern life I enjoy language. I enjoy words, their meaning, what they sound like to the ear, what they sound like to the listener. I strive to write the perfect sentence in all that I do, and when I write [the] perfect sentence I know it. If I had a second life I'd be a librettist for Broadway musicals.
I cannot remember a time when I was not enraptured or tortured by words. Always there have been words which, sometimes for their sound alone, sometimes for their sound and sense, I would not use. From a loathing of their grossness or sickliness, their weight or want of weight. Their inexactitude, their feeling of acidity or insipidity. Their action, not only on the intelligence but on the nerves, was instant.
What you feel when you're writing is the relief of thinking: if you write the sentence correctly, you're clarifying. If you write the right sentence, nothing feels as good.
I couldn't just be good on the mic. I needed to be good on the mic; I needed to be good in the ring; I need to be good in my presentation; my ring attire need to look good, my appearance. Everything about me needed to be the best. I couldn't be weak in any area because you're only as good as your weakest aspect.
An artist who makes pictures that look good but express nothing is like a writer whose words sound good but have no meaning.
If you are stymied as a writer, if it's just not coming together, then take the pressure off and don't feel that you need to write 1,000 words today; just write one really good sentence.
I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.
What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.
I think I write very good songs. But I don't know if anybody could record my songs with as much fervor. They sound good sung by me, and they especially sound good with my band.
It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence - no first draft. I can't write five words but that I change seven.
It's time that we move from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions.
It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.
I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
The first draft of everything, I write longhand. One of the nice things about that is that it makes you keep going. If you write a bad sentence on the computer, then it's very tempting to go back and fidget with it and spend another 20 minutes trying to make it into a good sentence.
A sentence is like a tune. A memorable sentence gives its emotion a melodic shape. You want to hear it again, say it—in a way, to hum it to yourself. You desire, if only in the sound studio of your imagination, to repeat the physical experience of that sentence. That craving, emotional and intellectual but beginning in the body with a certain gesture of sound, is near the heart of poetry.
I start with voice, maybe a sentence. That sentence might embody an image, and I go from there. One sentence to the next. Sound drives the work these days - sound before description.
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