Sentences Quotes

Quotes tagged as "sentences" Showing 1-30 of 53
Veronica Roth
“It's strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head.”
Veronica Roth, Allegiant

Suman Pokhrel
“I've touched some sentences and have kissed some words.”
Suman Pokhrel

Suman Pokhrel
“Sentences confined to limited definitions
meanings restricted to limited words
knotted in experiences and sensations
musings, smiles and the eyes;
and holding the entire love
of Creation in my heart
how may I offer you one?”
Suman Pokhrel, शून्य मुटुको धड्कनभित्र) [Shoonya Mutuku Dhadkanbhitra]

Virginia Woolf
“I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them. ”
Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

Arthur Rimbaud
“I have stretched ropes from bell-tower to bell-tower; garlands from window to window; chains of gold from star to star, and I dance.”
Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations

Dejan Stojanovic
“To cut and tighten sentences is the secret of mastery.”
Dejan Stojanovic

Kate DiCamillo
“She said the words, and then she had a strange moment of seeing them, hanging there over her head.

"You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!"

There is just no predicting what kind of sentences you might say, thought Flora. For instance, who would ever think you would shout, "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!"?
Kate DiCamillo, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

Cassandra Clare
“Jace rolled his eyes. “It’s fascinating,” he said. “You know all these words, and they’re all English, but when you string them together into sentences, they just don’t make any sense.”
(Jace, to Simon)”
Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

Bryan Stevenson
“We’re supposed to sentence people fairly after fully considering their life circumstances, but instead we exploit the inability of the poor to get the legal assistance they need—all so we can kill them with less resistance.”
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

Saeed Jones
“Toni Morrison’s sentences were like rivers with murky bottoms. They didn’t obey the rules I was learning in school. When I stepped in, I couldn’t see my feet; I retreated back to the shore.”
Saeed Jones, How We Fight For Our Lives

W.G. Sebald
“After resting in the cool, shadowy interior for a while, with feelings of both gratitude and distaste, he set off once more, and as he left, just as one might ruffle the hair of a son or younger brother, he ran his fingers over the marble locks of a dwarfish figure which, at the foot of one of the mighty columns, had been bearing the immense weight of a holy-water font for centuries.”
W.G. Sebald, Vertigo

Henry Miller
“I love everything that flows,’ said the great blind Milton of our times. I was thinking of him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of joy: I was thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night which he is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it’s painful gall-stones, its gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul...”
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Bryan Stevenson
“A wide assortment of children's rights advocates, lawyers, and mental health experts were watching closely when we asked the Court to declare life-without-parole sentences imposed on children unconstitutional.

....I told the Court that the United States is the only country in the world that imposes life imprisonment without parole sentences on children. I explained that condemning children violates international law, which bans these sentences for children. We showed the Court that these sentences are disproportionately imposed on children of color. We argued that the phenomenon of life sentences imposed on children is largely a result of harsh punishments that were created for career adult criminals and were were never intended for children--which made the imposition of such a sentence on juveniles like Terrance Graham and Joe Sullivan unusual. I also told the Court that to say to any child of thirteen that he is fit only to die in prison is cruel.”
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

Rebecca Solnit
“I wanted language that could be simple and clear when the subject required it, but sometimes clarity requires complexity. I believe in the irreducible and in invocation and evocation, and I am fond of sentences less like superhighways than winding paths, with the occasional scenic detour or pause to take in the view, since a footpath can traverse steep and twisting terrain that a paved road cannot. I know that sometimes what gets called digression is pulling in a passenger who fell off the boat.”
Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir

Anthony T. Hincks
“A paragraph's existence owes itself to the words contained in the sentences within.”
Anthony T. Hincks

George Saunders
“Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others). If we learn what a truthful sentence looks like, a little flag goes up at a false one.”
George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

Delia Owens
“Slowly, she unraveled each word of the sentence: " 'There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.' "
"Oh," she said. "Oh."
"You can read, Kya. There will never be a time again when you can't read."
"It ain't just that." She spoke almost in a whisper. "I wadn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full."
He smiled. "That's a veery good sentence. Not all words hold that much.”
Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

Douglas Glover
“I composed balanced sentences and periodic sentences and practiced, till I was blue in the face, the English department adage, Vary your sentence structure. Amazingly enough, having a mix of long and short sentences, along with topic-body-conclusion paragraph structure, did not automatically make my prose interesting.”
Douglas Glover, Attack of the Copula Spiders: Essays on Writing

Nathalie Léger
“The hardest thing is the words, how long it takes, he says, taking a sip of his drink, the concentration you need to work out what goes with what, how to put together a single sentence. I had no idea that shaping a sentence was so difficult, all the possible ways there are to do i, even the simplest sentence, as soon as it's written down, all the hesitations, all the problems. (Mickey Mantle describing writing his memoir.)”
Nathalie Léger, Suite for Barbara Loden

Henry Miller
“I love everything that flows,’ said the great blind Milton of our times. I was thinking of him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of joy: I was thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night which he is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it’s painful gall-stones, it’s gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul...”
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Annie Dillard
“W HEN YOU WRITE , you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.”
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Doug Rice
“Each sentence as it is written is written to lead us to a place of silence. The silence that follows each sentence should endure as long as it has taken you to read the sentence. This silence is different from white space. Silence should fill your body, not simply remain on the page. Your body needs to experience the space between. Silence needs to mark you.”
Doug Rice, between appear and disappear

Constance Hale
“The English critic George Saintsbury once compared the act of sentence making--the letting out and pulling in of clauses--to the letting out and pulling in of the slide of a trombone or the "draws" of a telescope.”
Constance Hale, Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose

Joyce Rachelle
“The best sentences are not those that are built from obscure words, but those whose meanings create ripples in our imagination that go beyond the words they contain.”
Joyce Rachelle

Anthony T. Hincks
“A single word can make all the difference in the world.”
Anthony T. Hincks

Anthony T. Hincks
“When words begin to tumble, sentences make no sense.”
Anthony T. Hincks

Devoney Looser
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that you could put almost anything in the second half of this sentence, because the first half sounds clever and wise and must remind readers of the genius of Jane Austen.”
Devoney Looser, The Daily Jane Austen: A Year of Quotes

Constance Hale
“The art of sentence making comes down to experimentation, skill, and variety. Just because you can do the three-and-a-half-somersault tuck off the high board doesn’t mean you must ditch the gorgeous swan dive. Good sentences can be short and muscular, and they can be long and graceful.”
Constance Hale, Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wicked Good Prose

“I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about sentences. I have been sentenced to this fate, you might say, which is both a bad pun and also the truth; between writing, teaching, and reading, I can't escape sentences.

The sentence contains the entirety of literature in miniature. Individual words hold their powers through context and placement; phrases carry their meaning through juxtaposition. Paragraphs are often too thick to memorize: a mindful, more than the mouth can manage. Sentences linger on the tongue and echo in the room. You can still hear, years and yearnings later, the sharpest sentences of our life.”
Anonymous

James A. Michener
“No writer ever knows enough words but he doesn’t have to try to use all that he does know. Tests would show that I had an enormous vocabulary and through the years it must have grown, but I never had a desire to display it in the way that John Updike or William Buckley or William Safire do to such lovely and often surprising effect. They use words with such spectacular results; I try, not always successfully, to follow the pattern of Ernest Hemingway who achieved a striking style with short familiar words. I want to avoid calling attention to mine, judging them to be most effective as ancillaries to a sentence with a strong syntax.
My approach has been more like that of Somerset Maugham, who late in life confessed that when he first thought of becoming a writer he started a small notebook in which he jotted down words that seemed unusually beautiful or exotic, such as chalcedony, for as a novice he believed that good writing consisted of liberally sprinkling his text with such words. But years later, when he was a successful writer, he chanced to review his list and found that he had never used even one of his beautiful collection. Good writing, for most of us, consists of trying to use ordinary words to achieve extraordinary results.
I struggle to find the right word and keep always at hand the largest dictionary my workspace can hold, and I do believe I consult it at least six or seven times each working day, for English is a language that can never be mastered.* [*Even though I have studied English for decades I am constantly surprised to find new definitions I have not known: ‘panoply’ meaning ‘a full set of armor’, ‘calendar’ meaning ‘a printed index to a jumbled group of related manuscripts or papers’.
—Chapter IX “Intellectual Equipment”, page 306”
James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir

« previous 1