William Zinsser Quotes

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

William Zinsser

• Writing
• Reading
• Easy

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• My dad was a football player - a soccer player - for Manchester United, and I loved playing football, but I also happened to be the guy in class who was pretty good at sight reading. My teacher gave me scripts, and I was very comfortable.

  

  Ian McShane
  • Good
  • Guy
  • Pretty

• There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.

  

  Beck
  • Different
  • Writing
  • Song

• Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.

  

  Padgett Powell
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Book

• 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
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Doing

• I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.

  

  Vince Gill
  • Up
  • Good
  • Writing

• I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.

  

  Vikram Rohit Shetty
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Army

• The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout.

  

  Garth Risk Hallberg
  • Writing
  • Dying
  • Ego

• The greatest pleasure of reading consists in re-reading.

  

  Vernon Lee
  • Reading
  • Pleasure
  • Greatest

• I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real.

  

  Zach Braff
  • People
  • Writing
  • Real

• I never have written a movie, but there are some bad movies out there. I can make one. I definitely want to get into that because that's how you, at my level, would get a lead in a movie - by writing a low budget thing for myself. So I gotta get to it.

  

  Hannibal Buress
  • Writing
  • Bad
  • Movie

• In tennis it's easy to get greedy - and one Grand Slam doesn't feel enough any more.

  

  Samantha Stosur
  • Feel
  • Easy
  • Tennis

• If I've learned anything in my career, it's that nothing worthwhile in life comes easy. That's just the way it is.

  

  Carli Lloyd
  • Life
  • Career
  • Easy

• Comics is still my first love. But I always did other kinds of writing, too, so I think of myself as a writer first.

  

  Warren Ellis
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Myself

• All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.

  

  W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Art

• I think the beauty of the writing of 'Game of Thrones' is not that the characters are fearless; it's how they overcome their fear, you know?

  

  Natalie Dormer
  • Writing
  • Game
  • Fear

• A lot of the songs on '2' are pretty personal, but even if I'm writing about something like that, I still tend to keep it pretty simple and open-ended. I like the idea of people listening to my album and it meaning something to me but maybe meaning something else to them.

  

  Mac DeMarco
  • People
  • Writing
  • Pretty

• The problem with too beautiful a view is that it's alright for the mulling stage. But for the writing stage, you want to be somewhere without a view, especially if it is very different from what you're writing.

  

  Vikram Seth
  • Different
  • Writing
  • Beautiful

• All good writing comes out of aloneness.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Good Writing

• It sounds odd, but I was a singer and started writing songs, and I didn't have anything in mind. Maybe it crossed my mind that it would be cool to have a hit record and a career, but that was so out of reach that I don't think I thought about it that much.

  

  Bill Medley The Righteous Brothers
  • Writing
  • Mind
  • Career

• Watching soccer is my main hobby, really. I'm no tactician or coach, but I enjoy watching the free flow of it, the different styles, and the histories behind clubs. Like Barcelona vs. Madrid - it's not just a soccer game; it's a geopolitical struggle. There are great storylines and no commercials.

  

  Andrew Luck
  • Great
  • Different
  • Game

• People use the Method as a shield; it shields them from being vulnerable. I hear all these young actors who are like, 'I'm Method, I'm gonna go live in the house, you know, I totally get it, I've done it, I've been there', but one thing I know is it kills spontaneity.

  

  Mark Ruffalo
  • People
  • Live
  • Done

• Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.

  

  John Dryden
  • Age
  • Strong
  • Alone

• A religion must be instrumental in spiritualising the individual into a boundless and holistic nature.

  

  Lobsang Tenzin
  • Nature

• Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

  

  William Zinsser
  • Writing
  • Reading
  • Easy