“The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.”

Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 7, Usage, p. 45.

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William Zinsser30

writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor 1922–2015

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“He was almighty quick at a time when a man was either quick or he was dead.”

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Source: The Quick and the Dead (1973), Ch. 4; L'amour here, and in the title of the work, uses a double entendre, with reference to archaic use of "quick" to mean "living" and a famous idiom regarding the living and the dead which originated in William Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament (1526), 2 Timothy 4:1: "I testifie therfore before god and before the lorde Iesu Christ which shall iudge quicke and deed at his aperynge in his kyngdom."
Context: He had seen Hyle shoot, and he had seen only one man he thought was as good... just one. He'd seen Con Vallian down in the Bald Knob country that time, and Con was quick. He was almighty quick at a time when a man was either quick or he was dead.

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“The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.”

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William Zinsser30

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