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Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

William Zinsser

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William Zinsser
Age: 92 †
Born: 1922
Born: October 7
Died: 2015
Died: May 12
Journalist
Literary Critic
Writer
New York City
New York
William Knowlton Zinsser
Writing
Reading
Easy
Makes
Hard

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Thought is action in rehearsal.
William Zinsser
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Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser
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Writing is such lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself. If I think it's funny I assume a few other people will find it funny, and that seems to me to be a good day's work.
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Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.
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Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
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People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like.
William Zinsser
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Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don't know-about whatever we're trying to learn.
William Zinsser
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To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
William Zinsser
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Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
William Zinsser
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Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.
William Zinsser
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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser
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Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
William Zinsser
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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
William Zinsser
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The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.
William Zinsser
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What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
William Zinsser
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Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
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The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
William Zinsser
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Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.
William Zinsser
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A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
William Zinsser
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You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?
William Zinsser