"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."

William Zinsser Literature See all quotes by William Zinsser →

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“You must find some way to elevate your act of writing into entertainment.”

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

“Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.”

“Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.”

“The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.”

“All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Familiar acts are beautiful through love."

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Literature1792–1822

#love

"The natural balance of the constitution is this—that the Crown should appoint its ministers, that those ministers should have the confidence of the House of Commons, and that the House of Commons shou…"

— John Russell

Journalism1792–1878

#love

"That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics."

— Aldo Leopold

Science1887–1948

#love

"We are socialists because we believe we live now in a world that requires a great deal of thoughtful planning ahead of time. We are socialists because we live in a world that is peculiarly interdepend…"

— Norman Thomas

Politics1884–1968

#success