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To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
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
Defend
Marketing
Sign
Alive
Written
Writing
More quotes by William Zinsser
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
You learn to write by writing.
William Zinsser
Writing is hard work.
William Zinsser
Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
William Zinsser
One of the saddest sentences I know is I wish I had asked my mother about that. Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are.
William Zinsser
Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
William Zinsser
Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
William Zinsser
Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
William Zinsser
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
The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn't induce him to continue to the third sentence, it's equally dead.
William Zinsser
Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
William Zinsser
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
William Zinsser
