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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.

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
Avoid
Writer
Anything
Writing

More quotes by William Zinsser

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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
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Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.
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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Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
William Zinsser
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There's no subject you don't have permission to write about. Students often avoid subjects close to their heart ... because they assume that their teachers will regard those topics as 'stupid.' No area of life is stupid to someone who takes it seriously. If you follow your affections you will write well and will engage your readers.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.
William Zinsser
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Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.
William Zinsser
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Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.
William Zinsser
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Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
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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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
William Zinsser
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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?
William Zinsser
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I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
William Zinsser
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Noise is the typographical error and the poorly designed page...Ambiguity is noise. Redundancy is noise. Misuse of words is noise. Vagueness is noise. Jargon is noise.
William Zinsser
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It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
William Zinsser
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Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
William Zinsser
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Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy the choice is ours.
William Zinsser