Quote

Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.

William Zinsser

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Hard
Writing
Flowed
Seldom
Lonely
Fun
Wasn
Words
Easy

More quotes by William Zinsser

Image
I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is linear and sequential Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn't the writing it's the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?
William Zinsser
Image
Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser
Image
A clear sentence is no accident.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.
William Zinsser
Image
All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
William Zinsser
Image
Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.
William Zinsser
Image
Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.
William Zinsser
Image
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.
William Zinsser
Image
Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.
William Zinsser
Image
It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
William Zinsser
Image
Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
William Zinsser
Image
My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
William Zinsser
Image
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
William Zinsser
Image
Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
William Zinsser
Image
Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
Image
You learn to write by writing.
William Zinsser
Image
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.
William Zinsser