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The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019May 9, 2025 2668

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.

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

G.K. Chesterton

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote Quote

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

Lisa See

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

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

Mickey Spillane

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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

Matthew Arnold

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

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

Stephen King

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

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

Raymond Chandler

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

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.