A Quote by William Zinsser

Good writing is lean and confident.

William Zinsser

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Confident Good Good Writing Lean Writing

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

Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.

William Zinsser

Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.

William Zinsser

[David Lean's] images stay with me forever. But what makes them memorable isn't necessarily their beauty. That's just good photography. It's the emotion behind those images that's meant the most to me over the years. It's the way David Lean can put feeling on film. The way he shows a whole landscape of the spirit. For me, that's the real geography of David Lean country. And that's why, in a David Lean movie, there's no such thing as an empty landscape.

Martin Scorsese

"Do not lean on your own understanding." That means don't bring in the crutches and lean on them, those crutches that you have designed and made to handle such situations. Stay away from them. Don't lean on them; lean on God.

Charles R. Swindoll

I think a good writer is a mix of confidence (sure that what they're writing is going to appeal to their readers) and uncertainty (what if all these words are crap?). If you're too confident, you get an attitude that seeps through into your writing, affecting the characters and the story. If you're too uncertain, you'll never finish anything.

Charles de Lint

I was really confident when I left WWE. I was confident that I would have a good time, and I was confident that I could wrestle differently than perhaps people saw me in the last few years with WWE, but I definitely wasn't prepared for this level of everything.

Cody Rhodes

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

Larry Niven

I'm in California, and that usually leans Democratic, and that's usually where I lean anyway... I would lean Democrat; I would lean Obama.

Axl Rose

I am very confident. I look confident. I act confident. I speak in a confident way.

Milton H. Erickson

I usually dread writing non-fiction. I don't feel comfortable or confident writing essays and the like.

Paul G. Tremblay

I feel confident writing on my feet with improv, but it's different when you're sitting down and writing it out.

Amy Sedaris

Something hurts, lean in. You just lean into that point until it loses its power over you. There's a certain amount of suffering that you have to be willing to sustain if you want to have a good life. And the real trick is to be able to sustain it with your heart open and still be loving.

Will Smith

Always care for the writing part first. Every good film project starts with good writing. If you have a good script, everything else follows. Writing is crucial.

Giovanna Cau

A good attitude for a woman is to be confident, and to be confident is to be natural.

Emmanuelle Alt

I would feel really dishonest writing a song that was really sassy, or really confident, because I'm not a supremely confident being. I think that's what people find interesting about what I do; it's very different lyrically.

Shura

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.

Samuel R. Delany

A Quote by William Zinsser

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