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Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.

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
Bold
Kind

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Writing is hard work.
William Zinsser
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Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize.
William Zinsser
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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
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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Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom's apple pie. In fact, now that Mom's apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn't Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not.
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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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.
William Zinsser
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I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.
William Zinsser
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There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
William Zinsser
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Many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing it better.... Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself.
William Zinsser
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If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.
William Zinsser
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Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.
William Zinsser
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What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
William Zinsser
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Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to personalize the author.
William Zinsser
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Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.
William Zinsser
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Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
William Zinsser
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Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser