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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
Hard
Writing
Reading
Easy
Makes

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Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five - just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind.
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I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
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There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't.
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Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
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Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
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When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.
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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
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A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.
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The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
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If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.
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Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
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Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
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Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom's apple pie. In fact, now that Mom's apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn't Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not.
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As a writer I try to operate within a framework of Christian principles, and the words that are important to me are religious words: witness, pilgrimage, intention.
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But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.
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Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
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All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.
William Zinsser
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Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I'd say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.
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