William Zinsser Quotes & Sayings

Finding a voice that your readers will enjoy is largely a matter of taste. Saying that isn't much help-taste is a quality so intangible that it can't even be defined. But we know it when we meet it. — William Zinsser

But what if we fail' they ask, whispering the dreaded word across the Generation Gap to their parents. 'Don't' they whisper back. What they should say is 'Don't be afraid to fail. Failure isn't fatal — William Zinsser

Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new. — William Zinsser

The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race. — William Zinsser

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

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

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

Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind, — William Zinsser

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. — William Zinsser

Writing is a craft not an art. — William Zinsser

A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity. — William Zinsser

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

Writing, I reminded them, can't be taught or learned in a vacuum. We must say to students in every area of knowledge: "This is how other people have written about this subject. Read it; study it; think about it. You can do it too." In many subjects, students don't even know that a literature exists - that mathematics, for instance, consists of more than right and wrong answers, that physics consists of more than right or wrong lab reports. I — William Zinsser

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

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

I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the day's work--and not with some enjoyment. — William Zinsser

Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that's still vivid in your memory. It doesn't have to be long - three pages, five pages - but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday's episode doesn't have to be related to Monday's episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past. Keep this up for two months, or three months, or six months. Don't be impatient to start writing your "memoir" - the one you had in mind before you began. Then, one day, take all your entries out of their folder and spread them on the floor. (The floor is often a writer's best friend.) Read them through and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about - and what it's not about. — William Zinsser

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

But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read. — William Zinsser

Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it. — 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 with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize. — William Zinsser

But on the question of who you're writing for, don't be eager to please. — William Zinsser

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

I don't want to give somebody my input and get his feedback, though I'd be glad to offer my ideas and hear what he thinks of them. — William Zinsser

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

As a writer I try to operate within a framework of Christian principles, and the words that are important to me are religious words: witness, pilgrimage, intention. — William Zinsser

Whenever I listen to an artist or an art historian I'm struck by how much they see and how much they know--and how much I don't.

Good art writing should therefore do at least two things. It should teach us how to look: at art, architecture, sculpture, photography and all the other visual components of our daily landscape. And it should give us the information we need to understand what we're looking at. — William Zinsser

Beware, then, of the long word that's no better than the short word: "assistance" (help), "numerous" (many), "facilitate" (ease), "Individual" (man or woman), "remainder" (rest), "initial" (first), "implement" (do), "sufficient" (enough), "attempt" (try), "referred to as" (called), and hundreds more. Beware of all the slippery new fad words: paradigm and parameter, prioritize and potentialize. They are all weeds that will smother what you write. Don't dialogue with someone you can talk to. Don't interface with anybody. — William Zinsser

Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I'd say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it. — William Zinsser

Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly
about any subject at all. — William Zinsser

If a philosophical writer cannot be followed, the difficulty of his subject can be placed only in mitigation of his offense, not in condonation of it. There are too many expert witnesses on the other side. — William Zinsser

The constant desire to win is a very American kind of trouble. Less glamorous gains made along the way--learning, wisdom, growth, and confidence, dealing with failure--aren't given the same respect because they can't be given a grade. — William Zinsser

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

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

Don't be kind of bold. Be bold. — William Zinsser

Vulnerability has a strength of its own. — 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 wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed. — William Zinsser

It's a memoir of various events in my own life, but it's also a teaching book: along the way I explain the writing decisions I made. They are the same decisions that confront every writer going in search of his or her past: matters of selection, reduction, organization and tone. — William Zinsser

Some people write by day, others by night. Some people need silence, others turn on the radio. Some write by hand, some by typewriter or word processor, some by talking into a tape recorder. Some people write their first draft in one long burst and the revise; others can't write the second paragraph until they have fiddled endlessly with the first.

But all of them are vulnerable and all of them are tense. — William Zinsser

Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with "but." If that's what you learned, unlearn it - there's no stronger word at the start. It announces a total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is thereby primed for the change. — William Zinsser

Every writing project must be reduced before you start to write. — William Zinsser

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

All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem. — William Zinsser

Probably no subject is too hard if people take the trouble to think and write and read clearly. — William Zinsser

Writing is such lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself. If I think it's funny I assume a few other people will find it funny, and that seems to me to be a good day's work. — William Zinsser

Good writers are visible just behind their words. — William Zinsser

Every time you look at a blank piece of paper, you're doing something new. You have to step onto that blank territory and remind yourself the sky didn't fall in the last time you wrote. Writing is a question of overcoming your fears-and everybody has them. — William Zinsser

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

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. — William Zinsser

Good writing is good writing, whatever form it takes and whatever we call it. — William Zinsser

Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray. — William Zinsser

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

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

Writing and learning and thinking are the same process. — William Zinsser

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what - these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank. — William Zinsser

A clear sentence is no accident. — William Zinsser

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

Writing is the handmaiden of leadership. — William Zinsser

Writing is thinking on paper — William Zinsser

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

Writing is such a lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. — William Zinsser

Writing is hard work. — William Zinsser

As a writer you must keep a tight rein on your subjective self - the traveler touched by new sights and sounds and smells - and keep an objective eye on the reader. — William Zinsser

writing is a sanity-saving companion for people in times of grief, loss, illness, and other accidents of fate. — William Zinsser

Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all. — William Zinsser

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons. — William Zinsser

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

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. — William Zinsser

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. — William Zinsser

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

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

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

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

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

I don't like to write, but I take great pleasure in having written - in having finally made an arrangement that has a certain inevitability, like — William Zinsser

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

Not every oak has to be gnarled, every detective hard-bitten. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and an obstacle for the reader. — William Zinsser

It is a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, "launder" became a dirty word. — William Zinsser

Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining--by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like "surprisingly," "predictably" and "of course," which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Trust your material. — William Zinsser

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

Soon after you confront the matter of preserving your identity, another question will occur to you: "Who am I writing for?" It's a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself. Don't try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience - every reader is a different person. Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new. Don't worry about whether the reader will "get it" if you indulge a sudden impulse for humor. If it amuses you in the act of writing, put it in. (It can always be taken out, but only you can put it in.) You are writing primarily to please yourself, and if you go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readers who are worth writing for. If you lose the dullards back in the dust, you don't want them anyway. This — William Zinsser

Adjectives are used as nouns ("greats," "notables"). Nouns are used as verbs ("to host"), or they are chopped off to form verbs ("enthuse," "emote"), or they are padded to form verbs ("beef up," "put teeth into"). This is a world where eminent people are "famed" and their associates are "staffers," where the future is always "upcoming" and someone is forever "firing off" a note. Nobody in America has sent a note or a memo or a telegram in years. Famed diplomat Condoleezza Rice, who hosts foreign notables to beef up the morale of top State Department staffers, sits down and fires off a lot of notes. Notes that are fired off are always fired in anger and from a sitting position. What the weapon is I've never found out. — William Zinsser

Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence. — William Zinsser

Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles. — William Zinsser

Most nonfiction writers have a definitiveness complex. They feel that they are under some obligation - to the subject, to their honor, to the gods of writing - to make their article the last word. It's a commendable impulse, but there is no last word. — William Zinsser

A writer is always working. — William Zinsser

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

We write to find out what we know and what we want to say. — William Zinsser

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

Don't say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. — William Zinsser

Memoir is the art of inventing the truth. — William Zinsser

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

I remember the language of the people I grew up with. Language was so important to them. All that power was in it. And grace and metaphor. Some of it was very formal and Biblical, because the habit is that when you have something important to say you go into parable, if you're from Africa, or you go into another level of language. I wanted to use language that way, because my feeling was that a black novel was not black because I wrote it, or because there were black people in it, or because it was about black things. It was the style. It had a certain style. It was inevitable. I couldn't describe it, but I could produce it. — William Zinsser

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

Thought is action in rehearsal. — William Zinsser

The final advantage is the same that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like to write better than everyone else, you have to want to write better than everyone 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 are not as high. Too many writers are browbeaten into settling for less than their best. — William Zinsser

Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five - just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind. — William Zinsser

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