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.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

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.

Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.

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.

You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?

The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.