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Took me a while to get to the point today, but that is because I did not know what the point was when I started.

William Safire

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William Safire
Age: 79 †
Born: 1929
Born: December 17
Died: 2009
Died: September 27
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
William Lewis Safire
Took
Started
Point
Today

More quotes by William Safire

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One difference between French appeasement and American appeasement is that France pays ransom in cash and gets its hostages back while the United States pays ransom in arms and gets additional hostages taken.
William Safire
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The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
William Safire
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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
William Safire
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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
William Safire
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A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
William Safire
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
William Safire
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A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.
William Safire
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The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.
William Safire
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If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.
William Safire
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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
William Safire
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No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
William Safire
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
William Safire
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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
William Safire
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The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.
William Safire
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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
William Safire
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I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
William Safire
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To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
William Safire
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When your government, employer, landlord, merchant, banker and local sports team gang up to picture, digitize and permanently record your every activity, you are placed under unprecedented control.
William Safire