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

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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
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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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Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver - words like enthralling and luminous.
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Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.
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Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom's apple pie. In fact, now that Mom's apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn't Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not.
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Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
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To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
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All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
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The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
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One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't.
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Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
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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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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
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Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
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If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
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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.
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Be grateful for every word you can cut.
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Writers are the custodians of memory, and that's what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.
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Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.
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