“Breeziness has become for many the literary mode of first resort, a ready-to-wear means to seeming fresh and authentic. The style is catchy, and catching, like any other fashion. Writers should be cautious with this or any other stylized jauntiness - especially young writers, to whom the tone tends to come easily. The colloquial writer seeks intimacy, but the discerning reader, resisting that friendly hand on the shoulder, that winning grin, is apt to back away.”

— From Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd’s perfect, brilliant, buy-it-now book Good Prose. It’s like having a writing class taught by two diligent artists, and it’s nice to hear advice from Kidder, since he’s your favorite nonfiction writer’s favorite writer (in my The New New Journalism book literally every writer profiled is like, “I wish I was Tracy Kidder”).