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Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.

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
Decide
Miscellaneous

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
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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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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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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Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
William Zinsser
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Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.
William Zinsser
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Writing is hard work.
William Zinsser
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The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
William Zinsser
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You learn to write by writing.
William Zinsser
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Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
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Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
William Zinsser
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Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
William Zinsser
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If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
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A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger and more precise, eliminating every element that's not doing useful work. Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut.
William Zinsser
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Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
William Zinsser
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The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.
William Zinsser
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Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
William Zinsser
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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
William Zinsser