Commandeer In A Sentence Quotes

You know how your brain turns to mush? How it starts when you're pregnant? You laugh, full of wonder and conspiracy, and you chide yourself, Me and my pregnancy brain! Then you give birth and your brain doesn't return? But you're breast-feeding, so you laugh, as if you're a member of an exclusive club? Me and my nursing brain! But then you stop nursing and the terrible truth descends: Your good brain is never coming back. You've traded vocabulary, lucidity, and memory for motherhood. You know how you're in the middle of a sentence and you realize at the end you're going to need to call up a certain word and you're worried you won't be able to, but you're already committed so you hurtle along and then pause because you've arrived at the end but the word hasn't? And it's not even a ten-dollar word you're after, like polemic or shibboleth, but a two-dollar word, like distinctive, so you just end up saying amazing?
Which is how you join the gang of nitwits who describe everything as amazing. ~ Maria Semple

It is remarkable that a fist-gnawingly dire England performance still has the power to shock, when in some ways this one had all the exquisite unpredictability of Norman Wisdom approaching a banana skin in the immediate vicinity of a swimming pool...
The England shirt is the precise opposite of a superhero costume, turning men with extraordinary abilities into mild-mannered guys next door. Were Stephen Fry to pull it on, he would struggle to string a sentence together. Were Lucian Freud to slip it over his head he would turn his easel round to reveal a childlike scribble of a cat. ~ Marina Hyde

The last sentence in a piece is another adventure. It should open the piece up. ~ Joan Didion

As regards any specific book, I'm trying primarily to tell a story, in the most effective way I can think of, the most moving, the most exhaustive. But I think even that is incidental to what I am trying to do, taking my output ( the course of it) as a whole. I am telling the same story over and over, which is myself and the world ... I'm trying to say it all in one sentence, between one Cap and one period. I'm still trying to put it all, if possible on one pinhead. I don't know how to do it. All I know to do is to keep on trying in a new way ... life is a phenomenon but not a novelty, the same frantic steeplechase toward nothing everywhere and man stinks the same stink no matter where in time. ~ William Faulkner

How can I deal with annoying persons in a way that utterly crushes them without tarnishing my carefully developed reputation or extending my already lengthy prison sentence? ~ A.C. Kemp

It is interesting to note that if you string together the Hebrew names of Mishael, Hananiah, and Azariah, you form a sentence which can read "the one who is like God [Jesus the Messiah] will bring Yahweh's grace and help." If you string together the Babylonian names they mean absolutely nothing. To me this reveals God is in complete control even to the point of giving you your name! ~ Ken Johnson

An imperfectly remembered life is a useless treachery. Every day, more fragments of the past roll around heavily in the chambers of an empty brain, shedding bits of color, a sentence or a fragrance, something that changes and then disappears. It drops like a stone to the bottom of the cave. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

All of our memories are, like S's, bound together in a web of associations. This is not merely a metaphor, but a reflection of the brain's physical structure. The three-pound mass balanced atop our spines is made up of somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 billion neurons, each of which can make upwards of five to ten thousand synaptic connections with other neurons. A memory, at the most fundamental physiological level, is a pattern of connections between those neurons. Every sensation that we remember, every thought that we think, transforms our brains by altering the connections within that vast network. By the time you get to the end of this sentence, your brain will have physically changed. ~ Joshua Foer

[As part of Camus' refusal to debate his political enemies publicly after their vitriolic responses to the publication of 'The Rebel'] At this point, the least sentence I might say will be used in a way that disgusts me in advance ... It would be impossible for me in that case to continue expressing myself with academic politeness. I am mistaken for a deliberately polite man whom one may insult in all safety. ~ Olivier Todd

ONE SUNDAY MORNING, I climbed up to the light from a weighty and complicated dream, nothing of it left but a ringing in my ears and the ache of something slipped from my grasp and fallen into a crevasse where I would not see it again. Yet somehow - in the midst of this profound sinking, snapped threads, fragments lost and untrackable - a sentence stood out, ticking across the darkness like a news crawler at the bottom of a TV screen: ~ Donna Tartt

In my first draft every sentence I put down is to advance the story. Each subsequent draft - the 3rd, the 7th, the 27th - is trying to turn each of those sentences into a poem. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I wrote to Mr. McEnroe, Senior. I said: "Here is the sentence once written by the immortal Bobby Jones. I thought you might like to have it done in needlepoint and mounted in a suitable frame to hang over Little John's bed. It says, The rewards of golf - and of life, too, I expect - are worth very little if you don't play the game by the etiquette as well as by the rules." I never heard from Mr. McEnroe, Senior. I can only conclude that the letter went astray. ~ Alistair Cooke

When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, "They do not make them so now," not emphasizing the "They" at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity They are related to me, and what authority they may have in an affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the "they" - "It is true, they did not make them so recently, but they do now." Of what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to bang the coat on? ~ Henry David Thoreau

On the heights above the river Xzan, at the site of certain ancient ruins, Iucounu the Laughing Magician had built a manse to his private taste: an eccentric structure of steep gables, balconies, sky-walks, cupolas, together with three spiral green glass towers through which the red sunlight shone in twisted glints and peculiar colors. ~ Jack Vance

I usually start writing a novel that I then abandon. When I say abandon, I don't think any writer ever abandons anything that they regard as even a half-good sentence. So you recycle. I mean, I can hang on to a sentence for several years and then put it into a book that's completely different from the one it started in. ~ Kate Atkinson

Essayists must not only be succinct but have original ideas and, even harder to come by, or to fake, likable voices. Consciously or not, they endeavor to win us over by charm. If an essayist can not only charm but write the unforgettable sentence, one that reveals the heart in a few words, I'm her slave. ~ Cyra McFadden

Every writer is necessarily a critic - that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg - nine-tenths of him is under water. ~ Thornton Wilder

Entering the office, Evie found Sebastian and Cam on opposite sides of the desk. They both mulled over account ledgers, scratching out some entries with freshly inked pens, and making notations beside the long columns. Both men looked up as she crossed the threshold. Evie met Sebastian's gaze only briefly; she found it hard to maintain her composure around him after the intimacy of the previous night. He paused in mid-sentence as he stared at her, seeming to forget what he had been saying to Cam. It seemed that neither of them was yet comfortable with feelings that were still too new and powerful. Murmuring good morning to them both, she bid them to remain seated, and she went to stand beside Sebastian's chair.
"Have you breakfasted yet, my lord?" she asked.
Sebastian shook his head, a smile glinting in his eyes. "Not yet."
"I'll go to the kitchen and see what is to be had."
"Stay a moment," he urged. "We're almost finished."
As the two men discussed a few last points of business, which pertained to a potential investment in a proposed shopping bazaar to be constructed on St. James Street, Sebastian picked up Evie's hand, which was resting on the desk. Absently he drew the backs of her fingers against the edge of his jaw and his ear while contemplating the written proposal on the desk before him. Although Sebastian was not aware of what the casual familiarity of the gesture revealed, Evie felt her color rise as she met Cam's gaze over her husband ~ Lisa Kleypas

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: "Of course it is none of my business, but
" is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I think that my first impulse arises from a hypersensitivity or allergy. It seems to me that language is always used in a random, approximate, careless manner, and this distresses me unbearably. Please don't think that my reaction is the result of intolerance towards my neighbor: the worst discomfort of all comes from hearing myself speak. That's why I try to talk as little as possible. If I prefer writing, it is because I can revise each sentence until I reach the point where - if not exactly satisfied with my words - I am able at least to eliminate those reasons for dissatisfaction that I can put a finger on. Literature - and I mean the literature that matches up to those requirements - is the promised land in which language becomes what it really ought to be. ~ Italo Calvino

Hans clacked his side-lips. "Do you have the sentence in your head that tomorrow's procession will halt this pest of yours, that it will bar the small-lives from the High Woods?"
"If it is as you say, no. No more than prayer can stay a charging horse. But that is not why we pray. God is no cheap juggler as to play for a pfennig. ~ Michael Flynn

I repeat the sentence silently in my head, I live you Dean Holder.
It's the first time I've heard her say Dean.
It's also the first time I've ever had my heart impaled by a word before.
"Thank you."
She smiles. "For what?"
For being alive, I think to myself.
"For being you," I say out loud. ~ Colleen Hoover

Father, if possible, take away this cup from me." Many cling to this text in order to use the sadness of the Savior as proof that he had weakness from the beginning rather than taking it on for a time. In this way they distort the natural meaning of the sentence. I, however, consider it not only as something that does not need to be excused, but nowhere else do I admire more his tender love and majesty. He would have given me less, had he not taken on my emotions. Thus he suffered affliction for me, he who did not have to suffer anything for himself. Setting aside the enjoyment of his divinity, he is afflicted with the annoyance of my weakness. He took on my sadness so that he might bestow on me his joy. He descended into the anguish of death by following in our footsteps so that he might call us back to life by following in his footsteps. I do not hesitate to speak of sadness since I am preaching the cross; he took on not the appearance but the reality of the Incarnation. Thus, instead of avoiding it, he had to take on the pain in order to overcome sadness. ~ Ambrose Of Milan

The thing is - I'm not an idiot. I'm rather intelligent, as proven by the fact that I just used the word 'rather' in a sentence. ~ Christian Finnegan

He who sees his heir in his own child, carries his eye over hopes and possessions lying far beyond his gravestone, viewing his life, even here, as a period but closed with a comma. He who sees his heir in another man's child sees the full stop at the end of the sentence. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

What mattered to Abu was the music of the sentence. 'A shadow does not belong to the object that casts it.' To Abu, it was a little poem. And in general, it was the poetics, the music of things that tossed his confetti. ~ Tom Robbins

A sutra is, so to speak, the bare thread of an exposition, the absolute minimum that is necessary to hold it together, unadorned by a single "bead" of elaboration. Only essential words are used. Often, there is no complete sentence-structure. There was a good reason for this method. Sutras were composed at a period when there were no books. The entire work had to be memorized, and so it had to be expressed as tersely as possible. Patanjali's Sutras, like all others, were intended to be expanded and explained. The ancient teachers would repeat an aphorism by heart and then proceed to amplify it with their own comments, for the benefit of their pupils. In some instances these comments, also, were memorized, transcribed at a later date, and thus preserved for us. ~ Swami Prabhavananda

You might reduce Lombardi's coaching philosophy to a single sentence: In any game, you do the things you do best and you do them over and over and over. ~ George Halas

On all other Christian societies the Church of Rome pronounces a sentence of spiritual outlawry. She alone is the Church, and beyond her pale there is no salvation. She recognises but one pastor and but one fold; and those who are not the sheep of the Pope of Rome, cannot be the sheep of Christ, and are held as being certainly cut off from all the blessings of grace now, and from all the hopes of eternal life hereafter. In the hands of Peter's successor are ~ James Wylie

I think Yelena Akhtiorskaya is a genius. What she manages to do, linguistically and emotionally, in the span of a single sentence, is astonishing. ~ Keith Gessen

One thing my mother always instilled in me is to always know my worth. Don't settle for less. She used to say to me 'Iman, no is a complete sentence, learn to say no. You don't have to explain it you don't have to say anything after it. It's a complete sentence.' So when I came to America 1975, I found out that the black models were being paid less than white models. So the first thing I did was say I'm not going to do the job unless I'm paid the same amount. ~ Iman Abdulmajid

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. Free will and predestination in one sentence and both true. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Uber, which raised $1.2 billion this month at a valuation of $40 billion, said in August it had sought a legal opinion and that its Seoul service obeys the law. Opposition to its operations is down to outdated regulations that precede smartphone and wireless technology, Allen Penn, the company's head of Asia, told reporters at the time. Paid transportation with unregistered vehicles is "clearly illegal activity," South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said later that month. The maximum penalty for Uber's alleged legal violation is a two-year prison sentence or a fine of nearly $20,000, Yonhap News reported Wednesday. ~ Anonymous

You can put suspenders on a salamander, but it still won't make waffles. See what I mean? That sentence makes absolutely no sense, but I got paid to write it. It's printed right here in a published book! ~ Dave Barry

What is literature, really? Boiled down to a single sentence, I'd say it's this: an endless conversation about what it means to be human. And to read literature is to engage in that conversation. ~ Nicole Krauss

My writing became more and more minimalist. In the end, I couldn't write at all. For seven or eight years, I hardly wrote. But then I had a revelation. What if I did the opposite? What if, when a sentence or a scene was bad, I expanded it, and poured in more and more? After I started to do that, I became free in my writing. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

We're commuter wives. These are our commuter lives. We're capable of carrying alcoholic husbands from the kitchen to the bathroom in a fireman's grip. Between trains, we train to fight with enemies we haven't met yet, battling against punching bags, leaping like the world is made of stone walls and we're storming them.
There's another version of commuting of course, as in to commute a sentence.
This is our sentence, these suburbs, the train that does not stretch to meet them ~ Maria Dahvana Headley

This novel humbled me in a number of ways. I was reading manuscripts for a magazine called Accent, and had in front of my prose-bleary eyes a piece called "A Horse in a London Flat." And I was in a doze. More dreariness. More pretension. When will it all end? How shall I phrase my polite rejection? Something, I don't remember what it was now, but something ten pages along woke me up, as if I had nearly fallen asleep and toppled from my chair. Perhaps it was the startle of an image or the rasp of a line. I went back to the beginning, and soon realized that I had let my eyes slide over paragraphs of astonishing prose without responding to them or recognizing their quality. That was my first humiliation. I then carried the manuscript to my fellow editors, as if I were bringing the original "good news," only to learn that they were perfectly familiar with the work of John Hawkes and admired it extravagantly. Hadn't I read The Cannibal, or The Goose on the Grave? Where had I been! What a dummy! (Though my humiliation would have been worse if I had written that rejection.)

A number of years had to erode my embarrassment before I could confess that I had not spotted him at once (as I initially pretended). What a dummy indeed. The Lime Twig is a beautiful and brutal book, and when it comes to the engravement of the sentence, no one now writing can match him. ~ William H. Gass

I do have a head, as I am at present manifest in the physical world, and indeed you demonstrate that my head possesses within it far more productive material than does yours.

That was a hell of a sentence, Mr. Clean. You might need to diagram that motherfucker for me. ~ Cameron Haley