Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.

Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.

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

Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.

Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.

All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.

Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.