Ocupation: Novelist
Life: June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950
Birthday: June 25
Death: January 21
A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
topic: Real, Lying, Latin, Insincerity, Long Words, Political Issues, Political Language, Evasion, Cuttlefish, Bad Language, Outlines