Quotes from William Zinsser

Thought is action in rehearsal.

Good writers are visible just behind their words.

Good writing is lean and confident.

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

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

Writing is a craft not an art.

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

What I want to do is make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.

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

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

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.

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.

Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.

Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.

If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.

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

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

There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.

Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.

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

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.

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.

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.

Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.