Andrea McAts

“Those subjects were for all those people who had an aptitude for them—the ones who carried a slide rule and could take a radio apart. I was a liberal arts snob, illiterate about the physical world I lived in, incurious about how things worked.”
― William Zinsser, Writing to Learn: How to Write--And Think--Clearly about Any Subject at All

“never stopped to ask, “Who is the typical Yale alumnus? Who am I editing for?” One of my principles is that there is no typical anybody; every reader is different. I edit for myself and I write for myself. I assume that if I consider something interesting or funny, a certain number of other people will too. If they don’t, they have two inalienable rights—they can fire the editor and they can stop reading the writer.”
― William Zinsser, Writing to Learn: How to Write--And Think--Clearly about Any Subject at All

“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.)”
― William Zinsser, Writing to Learn: How to Write--And Think--Clearly about Any Subject at All

“The economic activity in which knowledge is transformed into an artifact with market value through the application of cognitive effort.”
― Cal Newport, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout