William Zinsser Want Quotations

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.

When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.

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.

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

Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.

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

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.