Quote

Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.

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
Looks
Prize
Life
Usually
Like
Security
Goal
Often
May
Best
Look
Wary

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A writer is always working.
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Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
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The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
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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.
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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.
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Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
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Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.
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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.
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Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
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Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.
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The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.
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Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
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Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
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Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
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People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.
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To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
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