Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
William Safire
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Stories
Ems
Right
Hot
Never
Shot
Shots
Lead
Eyes
Story
Eye
Ambiguity
More quotes by William Safire
Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
William Safire
Have a definite opinion.
William Safire
You don't overturn a previous court's decisions lightly and I think most Americans are somewhere in the middle on abortion and there's not going to be a revolution here at all.
William Safire
English is a stretch language one size fits all.
William Safire
Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace.
William Safire
The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
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
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
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
I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
William Safire
Adjective salad is delicious, with each element contributing its individual and unique flavor but a puree of adjective soup tastes yecchy.
William Safire
Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
William Safire
As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
William Safire
Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
William Safire
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
To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
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
If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
William Safire
The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
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