William Zinsser Quotes
Writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn't the writing; it's the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?
William Zinsser
Quotes to Explore
I was a confused young girl with so much tragedy. Sometimes when you're going through stuff, the last person you're thinking exists is God. I mean, it was my confusion, the anger that was in my heart, all that drama. But thank God I know God now, okay?
Tasha Smith
When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.
E. L. Doctorow
Music, first of all, is completely about abstraction, which is exactly what architecture is not. In a way, it has been incredibly constructive to know what true abstraction is. So you don't fall into the trap of thinking that what you do is abstract.
Rafael Vinoly
Instead of writing songs for girls, I tend to write albums, which I guess is a bit weird.
Ed Sheeran
Writing for me is quite a plastic form, a kind of mental sculpture, although that sounds weird. It acquires its character and its depth as it goes along.
Kate Atkinson
I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white, and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time, but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent, and I'm not your mommy; I'm a white piece of paper. You wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like.
Aaron Sorkin
Medicine was certainly intended to be a career. I wanted to become a psychiatrist, an adolescent ambition which, of course, is fulfilled by many psychiatrists. The doctor/psychiatrist figures in my writing are alter egos of a kind, what I would have been had I not become a writer - a personal fantasy that I've fed into my fiction.
J. G. Ballard
Before I even knew what that half of my family did, I was interested in performing. I remember being seven years old and up on a stage and loving it. I've always adored it. Not just acting, but the whole process of writing and directing movies, everything that has to do with that part of life. Maybe it's in my blood.
Jack Huston
If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend.
Daniel Dennett
I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.
James A. Michener
Just being raised in a home where my mother, from as early as I can remember, always taught me to be thinking about other people first, basically that our service was going to be the measure of our success.
David Robinson
The Cars
A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
Anne Stevenson
My family was always playing with words. It is little wonder that even after I got serious about writing, I've had a hard time getting serious about words.
James Howe
My life often feels like a whirling dervish of kids, writing, speaking, and pastoral ministry.
Kevin DeYoung
I grew up thinking a bit of pushing and shoving was completely normal. Then I suddenly learned that if you kick another player, you get in trouble. Nobody had ever reprimanded me for that before.
Diego Costa
The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.
Billy Collins
In the early Seventies, I started writing a little autobiographical novel about my childhood - I made it into a mystery story.
Bobbie Ann Mason
If you are still thinking about a script after five or ten years, that's a sign that it's good - not that it's stale. And the opposite is true - if everyone wants to make your movie, that's a sign that it probably sucks.
Jason Blum
I've dried my eyes and I realized I deserve somebody that'll treat me right.
LeToya Luckett
Destiny's Child
Although it was the middle of winter, I finally realized that, within me, summer was inextinguishable.
Albert Camus
It has long been believed that a man who gets bald across the front of his head is a thinker while a man who gets bald on the crown of his head is a lover. It follows, certainly, that a man who gets bald all over his head thinks he's a lover.
L. M. Boyd
Young adult novels don't shy away from the discussion of weight issues, and 'Blubber,' the tale of an overweight, not-so-sympathetic fifth-grader bullied by her peers, is a refreshing take.
Jami Attenberg
Writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn't the writing; it's the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?
William Zinsser
