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The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019May 9, 2025 2348

I came across this today and broke up laughing. These are seriously clever! Thanks to the Washington Post. I wasn’t aware of their neologism contest, but I am now! Read and enjoy. Pass it along.

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

Orson Scott Card

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Michael Crichton

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.