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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
Still
Today
Humorist
Trying
Outlandish
Humorists
Overnight
Routine
Becomes
Stills
More quotes by William Zinsser
There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.
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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
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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.
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All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
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It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
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Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.
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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
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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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
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The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind of writing you want to do.
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Writing is linear and sequential Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn't the writing it's the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?
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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.
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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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The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
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One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
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A clear sentence is no accident.
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Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
William Zinsser
What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
William Zinsser
Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
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Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.
William Zinsser
