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The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment - they're stuck with you for a long time.
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
York
Wonderful
Columnist
Times
Columnists
Thing
Appointment
Long
Appointments
Time
Stuck
Like
Supreme
Court
More quotes by William Safire
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
The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
William Safire
Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
William Safire
The CEO era gave rise to the CFO (not certified flying object, as you might imagine, but chief financial officer) and, most recently, the CIO, chief investment officer, a nice boost for the bookkeeper you can't afford to give a raise . . .
William Safire
Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
William Safire
Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
William Safire
Give your main clause a little space. Prose is not like boxing the skilled writer deliberately telegraphs his punch, knowing that the reader wants to take the message directly on the chin.
William Safire
I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
William Safire
To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own.
William Safire
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
Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
William Safire
Don't expect others to do your work for you.
William Safire
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
The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.
William Safire
Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
William Safire
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
Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
William Safire
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
A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.
William Safire
This is what it's all about. From what I could see, you could get a bunch of people together, whip up the press and have some impact.
William Safire
