I’ve also discovered that knowledge is not as compartmented as I thought it was. It’s not a hundred different rooms inhabited by strangers; it’s all … - William Zinsser

Most men and women lead lives, if not of quiet desperation, at least of desperate quietness, and they jump at a chance to talk about their work to an outsider who seems eager to listen.

Yet very few people realize how badly they write and how badly this hurts them and their career and their company. People are judged on the basis of who they appear to be in their writing, and if what they write is pompous or fuzzy or disorganized they will be perceived as all those things. Bad writing makes bright people look dumb.

had learned by long travail a far from obvious lesson: Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content; the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.)