Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Facts
Look
Looks
Nearest
Made
Exit
Make
Presented
Ready
Stop
Point
More quotes by William Zinsser
Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons.
William Zinsser
To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
William Zinsser
Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
William Zinsser
All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
William Zinsser
Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.
William Zinsser
Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser
But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.
William Zinsser
Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser
Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
William Zinsser
A clear sentence is no accident.
William Zinsser
Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don't know-about whatever we're trying to learn.
William Zinsser
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
William Zinsser
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
William Zinsser
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
William Zinsser
Never hesitate to imitate another writer - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.
William Zinsser
Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
William Zinsser
There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
William Zinsser
