One false word, one extra word, and somebody’s thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store. Brevity is very important. If you’re going to be longwinded, it should be for a purpose. Not just because you like your words.
Patricia Marx
The Ragged Edge of Life
Mrs. Swaffield perched upright on the edge of the armchair and smiled across at them encouragingly, bringing into the room’s cheerlessness a reassuring ambience of homemade jam, well-conducted Sunday schools, and massed women’s choirs singing Blake’s ‘Jerusalem.’ Both men felt immediately at home with her. Both in their different lives had met her kind before. It was not, thought Dalgliesh that she was unaware of the frayed and ragged edges of life. She would merely iron them out with a firm hand and neatly hem them down.
from Death of an Expert Witness by P.D. James
A Non-Lethal Calendar
The new calendar was only one of countless utopian measures the ruling Jacobins initiated in 1793–94, but it is notable because, apparently, not a single person had to be murdered to carry it out.
from The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss