“Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist’s head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.”
— William Zinsser
“Vulnerability has a strength of its own.”
— William Zinsser
“There are some writers who sweep us along so strongly in their current of energy–Normal mailer, Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison, William F. Buckley, Jr., Hunter Thompson, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers–that we assume that when they go to work the words just flow. Nobody thinks of the effort they made every morning to turn on the switch. You also have to turn on the switch. Nobody is going to do it for you.”
— 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
“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.”
— William Zinsser
“Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.”
— William Zinsser