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Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.

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
Thinking
Anyone
Sensitive
Words
Clearly
Language
Souls
Write
Thinks
Thought
Subject
Arrangement
Able
Gift
Arrangements
Soul
Subjects
Belongs
Writing
Special
Logical

More quotes by William Zinsser

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A clear sentence is no accident.
William Zinsser
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Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.
William Zinsser
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't.
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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If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
William Zinsser
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Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new.
William Zinsser
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Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
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.
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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Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.
William Zinsser
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People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.
William Zinsser
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Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
William Zinsser
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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
William Zinsser
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Finding a voice that your readers will enjoy is largely a matter of taste. Saying that isn't much help-taste is a quality so intangible that it can't even be defined. But we know it when we meet it.
William Zinsser
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Be grateful for every word you can cut.
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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I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
William Zinsser
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Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
William Zinsser
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Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
William Zinsser
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Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
William Zinsser