Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not. William Zinsser More Quotes by William Zinsser More Quotes From William Zinsser 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. William Zinsser wantwritingbelieve Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land. William Zinsser writingtalkingthinking Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand. William Zinsser anything-goesworld Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain. William Zinsser eyebrainwriting The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis. William Zinsser writingnumbersway Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other. William Zinsser clearwritingthinking All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem. William Zinsser writing-wellproblemwriting The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details. William Zinsser small-detailsdetailsgames 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. William Zinsser stupidwritingteacher If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway. William Zinsser dustifswant If you would like to write better than everybody else, you have to want to write better than everybody else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you've written against the various middlemen - editors, agents and publishers - whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards not so high. William Zinsser pridesightwriting 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. William Zinsser readerimportantfirsts Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good. William Zinsser readingwhitewriting 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. William Zinsser egowritingbelieve All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don't keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next, and that narrative - good old-fashioned storytelling - is what should pull your readers along without their noticing the tug. William Zinsser togetherwritingfall Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy; the choice is ours. William Zinsser celebratechoiceswriting Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. Bach and Picasso didn't spring full-blown as Bach or Picasso; they needed models. This is especially true of writing. William Zinsser writingspringart 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. William Zinsser emotionalwritingbelieve 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. William Zinsser wantwritingmen Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don't know-about whatever we're trying to learn. William Zinsser writingtryingthinking
