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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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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
Thinking
Tickle
Elevating
Improve
Least
Reading
Writing

More quotes by 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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Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
William Safire
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
William Safire
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
William Safire
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
William Safire
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Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.
William Safire
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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
William Safire
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The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control.
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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Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
William Safire
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
William Safire
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In dealing with Syria's dictator...only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria's proxies suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus.
William Safire
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On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.
William Safire
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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
William Safire
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
William Safire
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Adjective salad is delicious, with each element contributing its individual and unique flavor but a puree of adjective soup tastes yecchy.
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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A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
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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We are all environmentalists now, but we are not all planetists. An environmentalist realizes that nature has its pleasures and deserves respect. A planetist puts the earth ahead of the earthlings.
William Safire