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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
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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
Knowing
Boxing
Telegraph
Space
Directly
Clauses
Give
Main
Chin
Littles
Message
Chins
Little
Messages
Skilled
Take
Reader
Punch
Giving
Writer
Deliberately
Like
Wants
Prose
Clause
More quotes by William Safire
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
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
Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
William Safire
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
The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
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
Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when he was British Foreign Secretary, said he received the following telegram from an irate citizen: To hell with you. Offensive letter follows.
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
At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
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
When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
William Safire
I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
William Safire
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
Never assume the obvious is true.
William Safire
Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
William Safire
If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
William Safire
Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
William Safire
A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
William Safire
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
Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
William Safire
