All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don't keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next, and that narrative - good old-fashioned storytelling - is what should pull your readers along without their noticing the tug.

Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.

Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.

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.

There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.

Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.