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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
Important
Witness
Trying
Intention
Writer
Principles
Within
Religious
Pilgrimage
Christian
Operate
Words
Framework
More quotes by William Zinsser
Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.
William Zinsser
You learn to write by writing.
William Zinsser
Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser
Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
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Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.
William Zinsser
If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
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
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
Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
William Zinsser
A writer is always working.
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Writing is hard work.
William Zinsser
All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.
William Zinsser
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
William Zinsser
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
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
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
The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.
William Zinsser
Thought is action in rehearsal.
William Zinsser
Be grateful for every word you can cut.
William Zinsser
Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
William Zinsser
