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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'

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
Quotations
Marks
Avoid
Mark
Overuse
Quotation

More quotes by William Safire

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After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.
William Safire
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I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.
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 most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
William Safire
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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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Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
William Safire
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... it's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.
William Safire
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The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.
William Safire
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To 'know your place' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say 'stay in your place' or 'hang on to your place', because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place - a feel for one's own position in the control room-is useful in gauging what you should try to do.
William Safire
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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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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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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
William Safire
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Decide on some imperfect Somebody and you will win, because the truest truism in politics is: You can't beat Somebody with Nobody.
William Safire
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By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
William Safire
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No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
William Safire
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Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
William Safire
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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
William Safire
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
William Safire
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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