Almost anything that you pay close, direct attention to becomes interesting.
When we humans speak, we are not merely communicating information but attempting to make an impression and achieve a goal.
Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.
All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.
Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language.
With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause.
There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing.
The cruelty of fate is that I must travel with the people I hate when the people I love are dead behind me.
The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
Climbing is a great effort, but the extraordinary pleasure.
Everything in your life gets better when you get better, and nothing is ever going to get better until you get better.