Quote

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

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
Follow
Reader
Away
Overboard
Writing
Jump
Trying
Readers
Anywhere
Commit

More quotes by William Zinsser

Image
Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
Be grateful for every word you can cut.
William Zinsser
Image
Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
William Zinsser
Image
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.
William Zinsser
Image
Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy the choice is ours.
William Zinsser
Image
People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is linear and sequential Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn't the writing it's the thinking. 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
Image
Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.
William Zinsser
Image
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
William Zinsser
Image
Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser
Image
People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like.
William Zinsser
Image
Editors are licensed to be curious.
William Zinsser
Image
Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is hard work.
William Zinsser
Image
Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.
William Zinsser
Image
Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.
William Zinsser
Image
There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
William Zinsser
Image
Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
William Zinsser