Good writers are visible just behind their words.

If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.

My commodity as a writer, whatever I'm writing about, is me. And your commodity is you. Don't alter your voice to fit the subject. Develop one voice that readers will recognize when they hear it on the page, a voice that's enjoyable not only in its musical line but in its avoidance of sounds that would cheapen its tone: breeziness and condescension and clichés.

Writing is hard work.

Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.

Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.

The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.