212 Quotes by 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.

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.

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.

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

To defend what you’ve written is a sign that you are alive.

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

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.

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.

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