the whims of style

"I would like to note here only items of a few lines. And things as badly written as possible so as to stay away from literature. As I sometimes write my friends; the style of my letters is in inverse proportion to my friendship. With strangers, I am careful. With acquaintances, a little less so. With those whom I really love, not at all. Watching one´s language, whatever one may say, distorts thought. I prefer the approximate word, the ordinary, the first at hand to the precise word which has slowed down thought for even a few seconds and by that fact has robbed it of spontaneity. I have some of the same feelings about my novels. That´s why it is so laborious for me to correct them. One of the reasons. The principal reason being that once written they are alien to me."

When I was old - Georges Simenon