William Zinsser Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• 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

  Writing, Pride, Sight

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• Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.

  William Zinsser

  Mistake, Corporations, Language

  William Zinsser (2012). “On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, p.14, Harper Collins

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• You must find some way to elevate your act of writing into an entertainment. Usually this means giving the reader an enjoyable surprise. Any number of devices will do the job.... These seeming amusements in fact become your 'style.' When we say we like the style of certain writers, what we mean is that we like their personality as they express it on paper.

  William Zinsser

  Jobs, Writing, Mean

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• To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.

  William Zinsser

  Art, Writing, Editors

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• Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.

  William Zinsser

  Toms

  William Zinsser (2012). “On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, p.18, Harper Collins

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• Thought is action in rehearsal.

  William Zinsser

  Positive, Thinking, Law Of Attraction

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• 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.

  William Zinsser

  Memories, Custodians, Records

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

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Essence, Games

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• No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood; people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief

  William Zinsser

  Running, Writing, People

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• Writing is hard work.

  William Zinsser

  Hard Work, Writing, Hard

  "On Writing Well". Book by William Zinsser (Chapter 2: Simplicity, p. 12), 1976.

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• A writer is always working.

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Always Working

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• Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.

  William Zinsser

  Art, Memoir, Inventing

  "On Writing Well". Book by William Zinsser (Chapter 12: Writing About Yourself: The Memoir, p. 99), 1976.

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• I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.

  William Zinsser

  Teaching, Writing, Sound

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• Good writing is lean and confident.

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Good Writing

  William Knowlton Zinsser (1980). “On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• 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

  Believe, Writing, Want

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

  William Zinsser

  Moving, Style, Narrative

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• All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Problem, Writing Well

  "On Writing Well". Book by William Zinsser (Chapter 8: Unity, p. 49), 1976.

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• If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.

  William Zinsser

  Dust, Want, Ifs

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• Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.

  William Zinsser

  Reading, Writing, White

  "On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction". Book by William Zinsser (Chapter 13 "Bits & Pieces," p. 130), 1976.

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• Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy; the choice is ours.

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Choices, Celebrate

  William Zinsser “The Writer Who Stayed”, Paul Dry Books

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• 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

  Art, Spring, Writing

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• Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to "personalize" the author.

  William Zinsser

  Reading, Writing, Next

  William Zinsser (2012). “On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, p.5, Harper Collins

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• If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.

  William Zinsser

  Needs, Painful, Good Words

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• Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.

  William Zinsser

  Lonely, Fun, Writing

  William Zinsser (2012). “On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, p.3, Harper Collins

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• 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.

  William Zinsser

  Events, Looks, Calling

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