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If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.

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
Belong
Anyway
Dust
Lose
Loses
Back
Dullards

More quotes by William Zinsser

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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.
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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.
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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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There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
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Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.
William Zinsser
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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.
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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
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Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land.
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The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.
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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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Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.
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Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
William Zinsser
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Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I'd say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.
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Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
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Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
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I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.
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Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. Bach and Picasso didn't spring full-blown as Bach or Picasso they needed models. This is especially true of writing.
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Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.
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Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
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