Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.

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

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.

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons.

If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.

Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.