The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.

But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.

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

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

Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.

Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with "but." If that's what you learned, unlearn it - there's no stronger word at the start. It announces a total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is thereby primed for the change.

Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.