Quote

Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.

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
Spray
Faster
Motivation
Head
Nasal
Clears

More quotes by William Zinsser

Image
To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
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
Image
But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.
William Zinsser
Image
If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.
William Zinsser
Image
Thought is action in rehearsal.
William Zinsser
Image
Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I'd say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.
William Zinsser
Image
A clear sentence is no accident.
William Zinsser
Image
Be grateful for every word you can cut.
William Zinsser
Image
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.
William Zinsser
Image
Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
William Zinsser
Image
Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
William Zinsser
Image
The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.
William Zinsser
Image
I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger and more precise, eliminating every element that's not doing useful work. Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut.
William Zinsser
Image
Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind.
William Zinsser
Image
No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief
William Zinsser
Image
A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.
William Zinsser
Image
You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?
William Zinsser