A Quote by William Zinsser

The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.

William Zinsser

Quote Topics

Basis Certain Force Learn Number Only Produce Regular Regular Basis Way Words Write Yourself

Quote Author

William Zinsser
American - Writer
October 7, 1922 - May 12, 2015

The libertarian approach is a very symmetrical one: the non-aggression principle does not rule out force, but only the initiation of force. In other words, you are permitted to use force only in response to some else's use of force. If they do not use force you may not use force yourself. There is a symmetry here: force for force, but no force if no force was used.

Stephan Kinsella

And the bottom line is we are who we are-we look a certain way, we talk a certain way, we walk a certain way. I strut because I’m a supermodel, and sometimes I gallop for fun. When we learn to accept that, other people learn to accept us. So be who you really are. Embrace who you are. Literally. Hug yourself. Accept who you are. Unless you’re a serial killer.

Ellen DeGeneres

As an active member of the Air Force, Army and Mine Warfare Caucuses, I meet with enlisted personnel and officers on a regular basis to learn more about their needs, both on the job and with their families.

Allen Boyd

Some days, you will sit down, and you write tens of thousands of words. Others, you have to force yourself to write a single sentence.

Sylvia Day

My advice to young writers would be to write every day, even if it is only a few words. Get yourself on the habit of writing and it will become a lifelong one. And find a place to write where you are physically comfortable. You can't concentrate if you aren't. Ernest Hemingway could only write standing up, and Truman Capote could only write lying down!

Cassandra Clare

On a regular basis if you're trying to produce something, I think you should work every day and set achievable goals.

Chris Bohjalian

Write 1000 words a day. That's only about four pages, but force yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That's what writing's all about.

Ray Bradbury

Generally, I don't attempt to produce a certain number of words a day. The discipline is to work whether you are producing a lot or not, because the day you produce a lot is not necessarily the day you do your best work. So it's trying to do it as regularly as you can without making it - without imposing too rigid a timetable on your self. That would be my ideal.

Chinua Achebe

The helicopter is a fine way to travel, but it induces a view of the world that only God and CEOs share on a regular basis.

Morley Safer

Underneath all his writing there is the settled determination to use certain words, to take certain attitudes, to produce a certain atmosphere; what he is seeing or thinking or feeling has hardly any influence on the way he writes. The reader can reply, ironically, "That's what it means to have a style"; but few people have so much of one, or one so obdurate that you can say of it, "It is a style that no subject can change.

Randall Jarrell

One of the things about the arts that is so important is that in the arts you discover the only way to learn how to do it is by doing it. You can't write by reading a book about it. The only way to learn how to write a book is to sit down and try to write a book

David McCullough

If you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking.

Malcolm Gladwell

If someone is killing, on a regular basis, thousands of animals, and if that person can only be stopped in one way by the use of violence, then it is certainly a morally justifiable solution.

Jerry Vlasak

Learn to write when you would rather sleep. Learn to exercise this gift of language when no conscious portion of your wits can vibrate anything but worry. Learn to write so, my son, and you can call yourself a writer.

L. Ron Hubbard

Why should a novelist not also be a historian? To force unnatural divisions within the English language is to work against its capacious and accommodating nature. To expect a writer to produce only novels, or only histories, is equivalent to demanding from a composer that he or she write only string quartets or piano sonatas.