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My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
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
Humanity
Four
Faith
Writing
Brevity
Articles
Clarity
Simplicity
More quotes by William Zinsser
If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
William Zinsser
Writing is thinking on paper.
William Zinsser
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
William Zinsser
Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
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
Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new.
William Zinsser
Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.
William Zinsser
Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser
Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.
William Zinsser
I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.
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
Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation. Be yourself when you write. If you're not a person who says 'indeed' or 'moreover,' or who calls someone an individual ('he's a fine individual'), please don't write it.
William Zinsser
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
William Zinsser
Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
William Zinsser
It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
William Zinsser
What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
William Zinsser
To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
