Quote

Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.

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
Bits
Annoyed
Sort
Lean
Littles
Depressed
Little
Somewhat
Writing
Confident
Good
Prose
Confused
Hedge
Tired
Timidity

More quotes by 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
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
Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
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
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
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
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
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
Image
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
Image
I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.
William Zinsser
Image
Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.
William Zinsser
Image
To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.
William Zinsser