Quote

Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it, if necessary, by pure willpower. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.

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
Energy
Admit
Keep
Ego
Wells
Identity
Might
Confidence
Well
Necessary
Generating
Writing
Pure
Willpower
Going
Opinion
Proceed
Believe
Use
Opinions

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Thought is action in rehearsal.
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Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons.
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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.
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Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
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Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.
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Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
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All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.
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The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.
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Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
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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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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.
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Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy the choice is ours.
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Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.
William Zinsser
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Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
William Zinsser
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Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
William Zinsser
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My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
William Zinsser
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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
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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Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
William Zinsser