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

If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.

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.

Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.

Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.

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

No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood; people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief