Quote

A writer is always working.

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
Writing
Always
Writer
Working

More quotes by William Zinsser

Image
You learn to write by writing.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
Every time you look at a blank piece of paper, you're doing something new. You have to step onto that blank territory and remind yourself the sky didn't fall in the last time you wrote. Writing is a question of overcoming your fears-and everybody has them.
William Zinsser
Image
Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is hard work.
William Zinsser
Image
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.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is such lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself. If I think it's funny I assume a few other people will find it funny, and that seems to me to be a good day's work.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
William Zinsser
Image
Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser
Image
A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
William Zinsser
Image
The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn't induce him to continue to the third sentence, it's equally dead.
William Zinsser
Image
Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
William Zinsser
Image
Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
William Zinsser
Image
The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.
William Zinsser
Image
People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.
William Zinsser
Image
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.
William Zinsser