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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.
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
Built
Like
Reader
Twin
People
Events
Pillars
Wants
Nonfiction
Happens
Twins
Event
Human
Somewhere
Humans
Places
Every
More quotes by William Zinsser
The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.
William Zinsser
Editors are licensed to be curious.
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My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
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Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
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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.
William Zinsser
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
Many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing it better.... Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself.
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A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
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The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
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Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.
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The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.
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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.
William Zinsser
If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.
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To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
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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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Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
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What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
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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.
William Zinsser
A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.
William Zinsser
