Quote

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

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
Must
Room
Readers
Writer
Content
Pieces
Emotions
Rooms
Material
Emotion
Piece
Tenaciously
Bring
Materials
Crammed
Moving
Reader
Explaining
Given
Emotional
Resist

More quotes by William Zinsser

Image
Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation. Be yourself when you write. If you're not a person who says 'indeed' or 'moreover,' or who calls someone an individual ('he's a fine individual'), please don't write it.
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
Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
Image
A writer is always working.
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
Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
William Zinsser
Image
Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser
Image
Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver - words like enthralling and luminous.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
William Zinsser
Image
Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
William Zinsser
Image
Noise is the typographical error and the poorly designed page...Ambiguity is noise. Redundancy is noise. Misuse of words is noise. Vagueness is noise. Jargon is noise.
William Zinsser
Image
The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.
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
Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.
William Zinsser
Image
It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
Not every oak has to be gnarled, every detective hard-bitten. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and an obstacle for the reader.
William Zinsser