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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

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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
Nothing
Replaced
Something
Stuck
People
Writer
Saying
Read
Jobs
Stills
Still

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.
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Writing is thinking on paper.
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Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. Bach and Picasso didn't spring full-blown as Bach or Picasso they needed models. This is especially true of writing.
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Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
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Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.
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Editors are licensed to be curious.
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Thought is action in rehearsal.
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Good writing is lean and confident.
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Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
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Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
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All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.
William Zinsser
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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
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Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
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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.
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Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
William Zinsser
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Memoir isn't the summary of a life it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It's not it's a deliberate construction.
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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.
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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
William Zinsser
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My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
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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