“Vigorous writing is concise. 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

“I’ve found that when a talented writer is operating with such wild poetic energy, such freedom from academic rules, social pressures, and normal expectations, that he or she is on the verge of losing control and crashing (like a daring downhill skier, for example), the resulting prose can be very nearly hallucinatory and absolutely exhilarating.”

– Tom Robbins,
talking to François Happe (March, 2009)