William Zinsser

People read with their ears, whether they know it or not,

— William Zinsser

The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.

— William Zinsser

Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.

— William Zinsser

Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.

— William Zinsser

“Rewriting is the essence of writing well:”

— William Zinsser

“It is possible that the artists are sane and the world they are painting is crazy.”

— William Zinsser

“No kind of writing lodges itself so deeply in our memory, echoing there for the rest of our lives, as the books…

— William Zinsser

“Mind in language are inseparable. If we violate our language we violate ourselves.”

— William Zinsser

Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.

— William Zinsser

“Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.”

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation. Be yourself when you write. If you're not a person…

— William Zinsser

Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger…

— William Zinsser

Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing…

— William Zinsser

The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second…

— William Zinsser

Much of my writing has taken the form of a pilgrimage: to sacred places that represent the best of America, to musicians…

— William Zinsser

Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read…

— William Zinsser

Many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing…

— William Zinsser

Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused.…

— William Zinsser

There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.

— William Zinsser

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.

— William Zinsser

There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.

— William Zinsser

Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.

— William Zinsser

“Be true to yourself and to the culture you were born into. Tell your story as only you can.”

— William Zinsser

Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.

— William Zinsser

The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind…

— William Zinsser