If you study what the great writers say about great writing, you notice patterns. Have you ever right-clicked on a word for a synonym that looks smarter? Stephen King would tell you, “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” Ever use “really” or “very” to really describe how very important something is? Mark Twain would tell you, “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.”

Ever feel like your words are too simple, your sentences need more punctuation, or your paragraphs must be longer? Ever feel like your readers need proof of your intelligence? And that bigger words, sentences, and more semicolons is your proof? Charles Bukowski would tell you, “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

Bukowski also said that genius is saying a profound thing in a simple way. Einstein said if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it enough. Great writers are first great thinkers. Then they’re masters of turning those thoughts into words. Thoughts are complicated. They’re hard to replicate in all the right words. The great writers labored to find the right words, to say what they were thinking, to keep it simple:

[1] “An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.” — William Shakespeare

[2] “The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.” — Hippocrates

[3] “Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.” —  William Zinsser

[4] “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” —  Stephen King

[5] “Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.” —  Hunter S. Thompson

[6] “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” —  Elmore Leonard

[7] “A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.” — Samuel Johnson

[8] “Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.” — William Penn

[9] “All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.” ― Raymond Chandler,

[10] “Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.” — William Butler Yeats

[11] “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

[12] “One should use common words to say uncommon things.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

[13] “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” — William Strunk

[14] “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” — Charles Bukowski

[15] “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” — Mark Twain

[16] “I don’t like punctuation except for the period.” — James Altucher

[17] “I write like I talk.” — Seth Godin

[18] “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” — Thomas Jefferson

[19] “This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” — Neil Gaiman

[20] “My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” ― Ernest Hemingway

[21] “I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter.” — Benjamin Franklin

[22] “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” — Franz Kafka

[23] “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” — George Orwell

[24] “A writer’s style should not place obstacles between his ideas and the minds of his readers.” — Steve Allen

[25] “Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.” — Matthew Arnold

[26] “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” — Charles Mingus

[27] “Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” — Albert Einstein

[28] “I never study style; all that I do is try to get the subject as clear as I can in my own head, and express it in the commonest language which occurs to me.” — Charles Darwin

[29] “The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.” — George Eliot

[30] “Use the smallest word that does the job.” — E.B. White

[31] “If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” — Harry Truman