212 Quotes by 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 truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.

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

Less is more.

Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.

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

It wont do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writer hasn't been careful enough

No kind of writing lodges itself so deeply in our memory, echoing there for the rest of our lives, as the books that we met in our childhood.

Vulnerability has a strength of its own.

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