Top 140 William Zinsser Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.”

— William Zinsser

2. “Writing is thinking on paper.”

— William Zinsser

3. “Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.”

— William Zinsser

4. “Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.”

— William Zinsser

5. “Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.”

— William Zinsser

6. “Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.”

— William Zinsser

7. “You learn to write by writing.”

— William Zinsser

8. “Memoir isn’t the summary of a life; it’s a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It’s not; it’s a deliberate construction.”

— William Zinsser

9. “Rewriting is the essence of writing well – where the game is won or lost.”

— William Zinsser

10. “Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things that people do.”

— William Zinsser

11. “If you write for yourself, you’ll reach all the people you want to write for.”

— William Zinsser

12. “Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don’t know-about whatever we’re trying to learn.”

— William Zinsser

13. “Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it, if necessary, by pure willpower. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.”

— William Zinsser

14. “Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual – it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.”

— William Zinsser

15. “Examine every word you put on paper. You’ll find a surprising number that don’t serve any purpose.”

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

17. “If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.”

— William Zinsser

18. “Be grateful for every word you can cut.”

— William Zinsser

19. “A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.”

— William Zinsser

20. “One of the saddest sentences I know is “I wish I had asked my mother about that.” Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are.”

— William Zinsser

21. “Thought is action in rehearsal.”

— William Zinsser

22. “Writers are the custodians of memory, and that’s what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.”

— William Zinsser

23. “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.”

— William Zinsser

24. “Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.”

— William Zinsser

25. “Good writing is lean and confident.”

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

27. “Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.”

— William Zinsser

28. “The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn’t induce him to continue to the third sentence, it’s equally dead.”

— William Zinsser

29. “I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.”

— William Zinsser

30. “If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.”

— William Zinsser

31. “You’ll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want.”

— William Zinsser

32. “To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.”

— William Zinsser

33. “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.”

— William Zinsser

34. “Don’t be kind of bold. Be bold.”

— William Zinsser

35. “Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.”

— William Zinsser

36. “Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.”

— William Zinsser

37. “There’s no sentence that’s too short in the eyes of God.”

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

39. “A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.”

— William Zinsser

40. “Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.”

— William Zinsser

41. “A clear sentence is no accident.”

— William Zinsser

42. “One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.”

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

44. “Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don’t know.”

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

46. “The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead.”

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser

48. “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.”

— William Zinsser

49. “Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.”

— William Zinsser

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

— William Zinsser