If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.

To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.

Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five - just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind.

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.

A writer is always working.

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.