Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow. - William Zinsser
Writing can be taught or learned in the vacuum. We must say to students in every area of knowledge: "This is a how other people have written about this subject. Read it; study it; think about it. You can do it too. - William Zinsser
Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity. - 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
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
No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood; people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief - William Zinsser
If a philosophical writer cannot be followed, the difficulty of his subject can be placed only in mitigation of his offense, not in condonation of it. There are too many expert witnesses on the other side. - 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
Mind in language are inseparable. If we violate our language we violate ourselves. - William Zinsser
My work has been the education I avoided. - William Zinsser
I never think of him as a scholar assaulting me with how much he knows, but as a teacher eager to share a lifelong passion for the subject. - William Zinsser
One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material. - William Zinsser