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The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.

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
Peak
Columns
Throw
Fit
Reader
Paper
Causes
Successful
Column

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I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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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.
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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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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.
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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
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A man who lies, thinking it is the truth, is an honest man, and a man who tells the truth, believing it to be a lie, is a liar.
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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.
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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
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The new, old, and constantly changing language of politics is a lexicon of conflict and drama?ridicule and reproach?pleading and persuasion.
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A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.
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No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
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The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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