William Zinsser Trying Quotations

Many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing it better.... Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself.

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.

Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.

Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.

I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger and more precise, eliminating every element that's not doing useful work. Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut.

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

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