Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Read
Jobs
Stills
Still
Nothing
Replaced
Something
Stuck
People
Writer
Saying

More quotes by William Zinsser

Image
It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
William Zinsser
Image
Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
Image
Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
William Zinsser
Image
Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.
William Zinsser
Image
If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
Image
What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
William Zinsser
Image
My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
William Zinsser
Image
A writer is always working.
William Zinsser
Image
Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser
Image
Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.
William Zinsser
Image
Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is hard work.
William Zinsser
Image
Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
William Zinsser
Image
Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it, if necessary, by pure willpower. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Writing is thinking on paper.
William Zinsser
Image
Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
William Zinsser
Image
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.
William Zinsser