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

Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.

Every time you look at a blank piece of paper, you're doing something new. You have to step onto that blank territory and remind yourself the sky didn't fall in the last time you wrote. Writing is a question of overcoming your fears-and everybody has them.

Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.

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

Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank.