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If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.

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
Reach
Write
Writing
People

More quotes by William Zinsser

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The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.
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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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If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.
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Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with but. If that's what you learned, unlearn it - there's no stronger word at the start. It announces a total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is thereby primed for the change.
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Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
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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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There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
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Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.
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Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
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Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
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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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Writing is hard work.
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If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
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You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?
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Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.
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Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.
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Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
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Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
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The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
William Zinsser