From the ghost of Hemingway's editor, to a number of authors whose Pulitzers should be regarded as dubious: 1) Many sentences are just for exposition; say what you need to say and get on with the story. 2) It's OK if a walk-on character is used as a prop -- most are for that purpose; the waitress can just take the order and get off! 3) Dialogue tells more through what's not said than by what is.

“The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.” —John Steinbeck