Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new.

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.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.