31 quotes
Good writers are visible just behind their words.
On Writing Well (1976)
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
On Writing Well (1976)
The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
On Writing Well (1976)
Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
On Writing Well (1976)
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.
On Writing Well (1976)
Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
On Writing Well (1976)
The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.
On Writing Well (1976)
Probably the finest travel book ever written by an American is Walden, though Thoreau only went a mile out of town.
On Writing Well (1976)
Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
You must find some way to elevate your act of writing into entertainment.
On Writing Well (1976)
Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
On Writing Well (1976)
All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
On Writing Well (1976)
A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
On Writing Well (1976)
Never hesitate to imitate another writer - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.
On Writing Well (1976)
Pure nonsense is a joy forever, as Keats didn't quite say. I love to see a writer flying high, just for the hell of it.
On Writing Well (1976)
We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.
On Writing Well (1976)
It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon "launder" became a dirty word.
On Writing Well (1976)
If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
On Writing Well (1976)
Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
On Writing Well (1976)
Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to "personalize" the author.
On Writing Well (1976)