The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

02 Dec, 2019

I came across this today and broke up laughing. These are seriously clever! Thanks to the Washington Post. I wasn't aware of their neologism contest, but I am now! Read and enjoy. Pass it along.

The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019May 9, 2025

I came across this today and broke up laughing. These are seriously clever! Thanks to the Washington Post. I wasn’t aware of Read More...

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

Orson Scott Card

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.