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Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

I've gotten very alert not just to mixed metaphor but to any writing mistake.

Metaphors are fine if they aid understanding, but sometimes they get in the way.

Metaphor is embodied in language.

I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a conceit rather than a metaphor, a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, and others of that ilk.

When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor.

A tendency to make metaphorical connections is an occupational hazard for those of us who write.

Look at almost any passage, and you'll find that a paragraph has five or six metaphors in it. It's not that the speaker is trying to be poetic, it's just that that's the way language works.

Metaphor matters because it creates expectations.

I think once you write fiction, you put it out, and it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, some of which are going to be shocking to the writer.