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Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.

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
Emotions
Dare
Large
Emotion
Tell
Stories
Generate
Smallest

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
William Zinsser
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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
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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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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
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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
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There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.
William Zinsser
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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
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Good writing is lean and confident.
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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The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
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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You learn to write by writing.
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 - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.
William Zinsser
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Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
William Zinsser
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To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
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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If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
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Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.
William Zinsser
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The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind of writing you want to do.
William Zinsser