Zinsser's Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Zinsser's

Zinsser's Quotes & Sayings

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People read with their ears, whether they know it or not, — William Zinsser

Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction. — William Zinsser

If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful. — William Zinsser

A clear sentence is no accident. — William Zinsser

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity. — William Zinsser

Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost. — William Zinsser

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material. — William Zinsser

There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you. — William Zinsser

Writing is thinking on paper — William Zinsser

Mind in language are inseparable. If we violate our language we violate ourselves. — William Zinsser

And so, at last, I come to the one firm conviction that I mentioned at the beginning: it is that the subject is too new for final judgments. — William Zinsser

The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead. — William Zinsser

Vulnerability has a strength of its own. — William Zinsser

Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy; the choice is ours. — William Zinsser

Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation. — William Zinsser

Editors are licensed to be curious. — William Zinsser

Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know. — William Zinsser

Writing and learning and thinking are the same process. — William Zinsser

Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow. — William Zinsser

There is no minimum length for a sentence that's acceptable in the eyes of God. — William Zinsser

Not every oak has to be gnarled. — William Zinsser

Every writing project must be reduced before you start to write. — William Zinsser

It's no fun to think about infinity and no cinche to write about it. Again, it helps to look for some human link. — William Zinsser

There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough. — William Zinsser

Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away. — William Zinsser

Be true to yourself and to the culture you were born into. Tell your story as only you can. — William Zinsser

Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish. — William Zinsser

To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive. — William Zinsser

Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is. — William Zinsser

I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of. — William Zinsser

I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the day's work--and not with some enjoyment. — William Zinsser

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other. — William Zinsser

A writer is always working. — William Zinsser

Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good. — William Zinsser

Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia. — William Zinsser

Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity. — William Zinsser

Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions. — William Zinsser

Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not. — William Zinsser

Simplify, simplify. — William Zinsser

Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence. — William Zinsser

Good writing is lean and confident. — William Zinsser

The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race. — William Zinsser

Good writers are visible just behind their words. — William Zinsser

Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose. — William Zinsser

We write to find out what we know and what we want to say. — William Zinsser

Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed. — William Zinsser

If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway. — William Zinsser

I took William Zinsser's advice that you write to yourself and you hope that there are people out there who are like you. — Donald Miller

...being "rather unique" is no more possible than being rather pregnant. — William Zinsser

All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem. — William Zinsser

But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read. — William Zinsser

There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God. — William Zinsser

Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver - words like "enthralling" and "luminous." — William Zinsser

Memoir is the art of inventing the truth. — William Zinsser

Good writing is good writing, whatever form it takes and whatever we call it. — William Zinsser

Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray. — William Zinsser

A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing. — William Zinsser

My work has been the education I avoided. — William Zinsser

Don't try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience - every reader is a different person. — William Zinsser

When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit. — William Zinsser

I don't want to give somebody my input and get his feedback, though I'd be glad to offer my ideas and hear what he thinks of them. — William Zinsser

I almost always urge people to write in the first person ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. — William Zinsser

The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds. — William Zinsser

Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles. — William Zinsser

What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously. — William Zinsser

Probably no subject is too hard if people take the trouble to think and write and read clearly. — William Zinsser

writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. — William Zinsser

Writing is hard work. — William Zinsser

I never think of him as a scholar assaulting me with how much he knows, but as a teacher eager to share a lifelong passion for the subject. — William Zinsser

Don't be kind of bold. Be bold. — William Zinsser

The best advice on writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for every word you can cut.' — Christopher Buckley

Writing is the handmaiden of leadership. — William Zinsser

You learn to write by writing. — William Zinsser

The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind of writing you want to do. — William Zinsser

Thinking clearly is a conscious act that writers must force on themselves, — William Zinsser

Writers and learners will write better and learn more if they understand the "why" of what they are studying. — William Zinsser

It requires writers to do two things that by their metabolism are impossible. They must relax, and they must have confidence. — William Zinsser

Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all. — William Zinsser

My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. — William Zinsser

If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for. — William Zinsser

Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge. — William Zinsser

You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next? — William Zinsser

writing is a sanity-saving companion for people in times of grief, loss, illness, and other accidents of fate. — William Zinsser

Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain. — William Zinsser

If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart. — William Zinsser

A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work. — William Zinsser

Writing is such a lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. — William Zinsser

Thought is action in rehearsal. — William Zinsser

Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes. — William Zinsser

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading. — William Zinsser

Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style. — William Zinsser

Writing is a craft not an art. — William Zinsser

Truth needs no adornment. — William Zinsser

It is a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, "launder" became a dirty word. — William Zinsser

All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it. — William Zinsser

Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there. — William Zinsser

Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe. — William Zinsser

If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do. — William Zinsser

The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction. — William Zinsser

Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind, — William Zinsser