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The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019May 9, 2025 2583

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

Thomas Jefferson

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

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

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

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

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

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

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

Joseph Conrad

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.