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Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.

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
Humorists
Overnight
Routine
Becomes
Stills
Still
Today
Humorist
Trying
Outlandish

More quotes by 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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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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Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.
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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.
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Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
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The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
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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.
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Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.
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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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Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.
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I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.
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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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Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.
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Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
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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.
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Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
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If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.
William Zinsser
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Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.
William Zinsser
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Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons.
William Zinsser