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

Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 3, Clutter, p. 13

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there." by William Zinsser?
William Zinsser photo
William Zinsser 30
writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor 1922–2015

Related quotes

James Clear photo
Thomas De Quincey photo

“A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.”

Appendix.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

Fulton J. Sheen photo

“Anxiety increases in direct ratio and proportion as man departs from God.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 2, p. 19

Siméon Denis Poisson photo
Flannery O’Connor photo
Joss Whedon photo

“You either have to write or you shouldn't be writing. That's all.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film
Robert Benchley photo

“Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

LIFE magazine (8 March 1929)
Context: Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.

Hugh MacDiarmid photo

“The number of people who can copulate properly may be few; the number who can write well are infinitely fewer.”

Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978) Scottish poet, pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve

Review of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

Sean O`Casey photo

Related topics