212 Quotes by William Zinsser

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

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

The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.

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

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

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

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

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

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.