All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.

Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.

Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.

People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like.

Noise is the typographical error and the poorly designed page...Ambiguity is noise. Redundancy is noise. Misuse of words is noise. Vagueness is noise. Jargon is noise.

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

Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.