Matthew Clayfield on writing

Money buys you everything except the chance to do it again.

Cast off the shackles of this modern oppression and take back what is rightfully yours, because as William Shakespeare never wrote, ‘Life is but a bullring, and we are but matadors trying to dodge all the horns.’

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778

• Love

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin1706–1790

• Reading