"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so t...
Write what you know.
More Mark Twain quotes
"To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a singl...
"I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way....
"I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever ...
"One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.
"The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction...
"Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
"Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.
"I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules.
"Perfect grammar--persistent, continuous, sustained--is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it.
"Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates with readers and creates a ripple effect.
"The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.
"The dream vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world's daytime dictionaries.
"Which is him?" The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go in a book someday.