Best 14 quotes of Roy Peter Clark on MyQuotes

A teacher of mine once said there are no true synonyms.

Express your most powerful thought in the shortest sentence.

Everyone should read, we say, but we act as if only those with special talent should write.

For what good is freedom of expression if you lack the means to express yourself?

Having the urge to write is one thing; acting on it is another.

If a period is a stop sign, then what kind of traffic flow is created by other marks? The comma is a speed bump; the semicolon is what a driver education teacher calls a “rolling stop”; the parenthetical expression is a detour; the colon is a flashing yellow light that announces something important up ahead; the dash is a tree branch in the road.

I may have grown up in the Age of Aquarius, but I'm growing old in the Age of the Acronym.

Riffing on language will create wonderful effects you never intended. Which leads me to this writing advice: 'Always take credit for good stuff you didn't intend, because you'll be getting plenty of criticism in your career for bad stuff you didn't mean either.'

Without a serious study of journalism, there can be no understanding of citizenship, democracy, or community.

Writing is not magic. It’s a craft, a process, a set of steps. As with any process, things sometimes break down. Even in a good story, the writer runs into problems. So the act of writing always includes problem solving.

All of us possess a reading vocabulary as big as a lake but draw from a writing vocabulary as small as a pond. The good news is that the acts of searching and gathering always expand the number of usable words.

But doesn't add something to what has come before; but takes something away. At its most daring, it can feel like a Bat Turn, a 180-degree spin int the Batmobile. Make that a But Turn.

If you want to write, here's a secret: the writer's struggle is overrated, a con game, a cognitive distortion, a self-fulfilling prophecy, the best excuse for not writing. "Why should I get writer's block?" asked the mischievous Roger Simon. "My father never got truck driver's block.

Whether the vessel is a legal document or a rap song, language is often chosen ot exclude. To use a scholarly phrase, "discourse communities" are often gated,so it's the good writer's job to offer readers a set of keys.