Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.

Good writing is lean and confident.

There's no subject you don't have permission to write about. Students often avoid subjects close to their heart ... because they assume that their teachers will regard those topics as 'stupid.' No area of life is stupid to someone who takes it seriously. If you follow your affections you will write well and will engage your readers.

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

There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.

Memoir isn't the summary of a life; it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It's not; it's a deliberate construction.

Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I'd say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.