William Safire's Death

The novelist William Safire died at the age of 79. Here is all you want to know, and more!

Biography - A Short Wiki

A Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The New York Times, he also wrote the popular “On Language” column for the New York Times Magazine. His politically-themed non-fiction works include Safire’s Political Dictionary, Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House, and Plunging into Politics.

He was born in New York City to a Romanian Jewish family and briefly attended Syracuse University. In 1962, he married Helene Belmar Julius.

Quotes

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Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership’s exquisite sensitivity.

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Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.

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The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it’s like a Supreme Court appointment – they’re stuck with you for a long time.

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Stop worrying about the ‘dumbing down’ of our language by bloggers, tweeters, cableheads and MSM thumbsuckers engaged in a ‘race to the bottom’ of the page by little minds confined to little words.

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What do you call a co-worker these days? Neither teammate nor confederate will do, and partner is too legalistic. The answer brought from academia to the political world by Henry Kissinger and now bandied in the boardroom is colleague. It has a nice upper-egalitarian feel, related to the good fellowship of collegial.