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

A clear sentence is no accident.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

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

To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.