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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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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
Within
Religious
Pilgrimage
Christian
Operate
Words
Framework
Important
Witness
Trying
Intention
Writer
Principles
More quotes by William Zinsser
To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
William Zinsser
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
William Zinsser
Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
William Zinsser
Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
William Zinsser
I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.
William Zinsser
One of the saddest sentences I know is I wish I had asked my mother about that. Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are.
William Zinsser
Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.
William Zinsser
Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.
William Zinsser
Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.
William Zinsser
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
Writing is hard work.
William Zinsser
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
Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new.
William Zinsser
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
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five - just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind.
William Zinsser
It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
William Zinsser
Be grateful for every word you can cut.
William Zinsser
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
Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
William Zinsser
