Phrasing Quotes

“I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!”
― Roman Payne

“In many a case, the phrase ‘I’d like to get to know you better’ is a euphemism for ‘I want us to fuck.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Modern formulations are necessary even in defense of very ancient truths. Not because of any alleged anachronism in the old ideas – the Beatitudes remain the essential statements of the Western code – but because the idiom of life is always changing”
― William F. Buckley Jr.

“When you deserved it, even the mail could rape you.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“Whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling as an epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

“It was nice to call my parents and proudly tell them, "My lady garden is going viral." In hindsight, that may have been a poor choice of phrasing.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses.  Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself.
-ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays in the Art of Writing

“ I was a child of wealth, expected to do nothing but everything.”
― Alessandra Torre, Black Lies

“So Aunt Jillian quit her job and hitched her wagon to Brant. Lived off food stamps and her savings account in a spare bedroom at Brant's house for two years. Then she brokered their first deal and all of the Sharps moved their bank account decimals seven places to the right.”
― Alessandra Torre, Black Lies

“There is nothing that interests me more than travel, I declare; and if I had had my health, I should have been a great traveller, a second–a second–"

"St Paul?"

"No, no. A second Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Post Captain

“...or said some racist thing out loud at church...”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day