John Barnes Quote

One of the stranger beliefs in science fiction is a passionate belief in Beautiful Writing—lots and lots of extraspecial exciting words thrown no hurled no CASCADED upon the reader in a shimmering shower of precious verbal gleaming gleanings and a singing pillar of righteous fiery syntactic spinach. The only thing that was good in that sentence was the spinach, and the hell with it.

That Style Thingie (1998 Essay)