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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
Licensed
Editors
Curious

More quotes by 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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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
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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Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
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The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.
William Zinsser
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Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
William Zinsser
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Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.
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
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If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.
William Zinsser
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Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.
William Zinsser
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As a writer I try to operate within a framework of Christian principles, and the words that are important to me are religious words: witness, pilgrimage, intention.
William Zinsser
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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
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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
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When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.
William Zinsser
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Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver - words like enthralling and luminous.
William Zinsser
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Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
William Zinsser
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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
William Zinsser
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All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
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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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