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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
Easy
Makes
Hard
Writing
Reading

More quotes by William Zinsser

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The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
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You learn to write by writing.
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Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.
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If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.
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There's no subject you don't have permission to write about. Students often avoid subjects close to their heart ... because they assume that their teachers will regard those topics as 'stupid.' No area of life is stupid to someone who takes it seriously. If you follow your affections you will write well and will engage your readers.
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Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize.
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It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
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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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Editors are licensed to be curious.
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Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
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A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
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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.
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Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.
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Be grateful for every word you can cut.
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Never hesitate to imitate another writer - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.
William Zinsser
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Writing is thinking on paper.
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Writers are the custodians of memory, and that's what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.
William Zinsser
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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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Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
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There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
William Zinsser