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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
Christian
Operate
Words
Framework
Important
Witness
Trying
Intention
Writer
Principles
Within
Religious
Pilgrimage
More quotes by William Zinsser
The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.
William Zinsser
Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy the choice is ours.
William Zinsser
Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.
William Zinsser
The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
William Zinsser
To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
William Zinsser
Every time you look at a blank piece of paper, you're doing something new. You have to step onto that blank territory and remind yourself the sky didn't fall in the last time you wrote. Writing is a question of overcoming your fears-and everybody has them.
William Zinsser
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
Many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing it better.... Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself.
William Zinsser
Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
William Zinsser
It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
William Zinsser
When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.
William Zinsser
What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
William Zinsser
A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
William Zinsser
Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser
A writer is always working.
William Zinsser
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
People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.
William Zinsser
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
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
Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.
William Zinsser
