William Zinsser Quotes

Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.

The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn't induce him to continue to the third sentence, it's equally dead.

You'll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want

The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind of writing you want to do.

A writer is always working.

Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do

Writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn't the writing; it's the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?

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

I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Writing is hard work.

Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.

Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver - words like "enthralling" and "luminous."

Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.

I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.

Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom's apple pie. In fact, now that Mom's apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn't Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not.

Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.

Good writers are visible just behind their words.

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

My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.

Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft; we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't.

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

Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.

Writers are the custodians of memory, and that's what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.

Memoir isn't the summary of a life; it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It's not; it's a deliberate construction.

Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content; the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.

Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other.

Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.

Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it, if necessary, by pure willpower. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.

To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.

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.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.