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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.

I never leave a sentence or a paragraph until I'm satisfied with it.

There is a tendency to underestimate the power of what we can do without words. Sometimes you can make a scene even more powerful and precise without dialogue.

It should consist of short, sharply focused sentences, each of which is a whole scene in itself.

Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that.

For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive.

For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what's superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, and, especially, cut, is essential. It's satisfying to see that sentence shrink, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more polished form: clear, economical, sharp.