[idlewords]

"I’ve also taken to toning down any rhetorical flourishes that could be interpreted uncharitably in a way that annoys some people. The result: boring writing stripped of a lot of my own personal style"

I read this as "I've become a better writer". 99.99% of the time, what you consider your unique, personal style is just bad writing.

[bkirwi]

-- All good writers are alike; all bad writers are bad in their own way.

I'm not too sure about this... there are many ways to be a terrible writer, but most good writers still seem to have a distinctive style. (Is it just that 99.99% of writing is bad writing? Oh, probably.)

[jeorgun]

I think this relates very directly to one of PG's essays¹:

    At an art school where I once studied, the students wanted
    most of all to develop a personal style. But if you just try
    to make good things, you'll inevitably do it in a distinctive
    way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way.
    Michelangelo was not trying to paint like Michelangelo. He was
    just trying to paint well; he couldn't help painting like
    Michelangelo.

It's much easier to be distinctive than to be good, so if you're trying to optimize for the former you'll have a much harder time achieving the latter.

¹ http://paulgraham.com/taste.html