Exclamation Quotes

So a little pain on our quest was good. But I had to promise to not let you get killed." "I didn't think Lucifer cared." "He doesn't." Of course not. "My dad," Adexios stated with assurance. Blonde hair went whipping from side to side. "Try again. You're close." "You listened to my mom?" His exclamation emerged a tad high-pitched. "Why the hell would you do that? ~ Eve Langlais

(If you've been puzzled by the name !Kung Bushman, the exclamation mark is not an expression of premature astonishment; it's just how linguists denote a click.) ~ Jared Diamond

She wrote to him fairly regularly, from a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations. ~ J.D. Salinger

Jack: "We were in danger. We shall probably get pneumonia."
Mary: "Isch!"
"There! You're sneezing already."
"I am not sneezing. That was an exclamation of disgust."
"It sounded like a sneeze. It must have been, for you've every reason to sneeze; but why you should utter exclamations of disgust I cannot imagine."
"I'm disgusted with you - with your meanness. You deliberately tricked me into saying - - "
"Saying - - ?"
She was silent.
"What you said was that you loved me with all your heart and soul. You can't get away from that, and it's good enough for me."
"Well, it's not true any longer."
"Yes, it is," said Wilton, comfortably, "bless it."
"It is not. I'm going right away now, and I shall never speak to you again."
She moved away from him, and prepared to sit down.
"There's a jelly-fish just where you're going to sit," said Wilton.
"I don't care."
"It will. I speak from experience, as one on whom you have sat so often."
"I'm not amused."
"Have patience. I can be funnier than that." - Wilton's Holiday ~ P.G. Wodehouse

In other nightmares, in his everyday reality, Victor watched his father take a drink of vodka on a completely empty stomach. Victor could hear that near-poison fall, then hit, flesh and blood, nerve and vein. Maybe it was like lightning tearing an old tree into halves. Maybe it was like a wall of water, a reservation tsunami, crashing onto a small beach. Maybe it was like Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Maybe it was like all that. Maybe. But after he drank, Victor's father would breathe in deep and close his eyes, stretch, and straighten his neck and back. During those long drinks, Victor's father wasn't shaped like a question mark. He looked more like an exclamation point. ~ Sherman Alexie

is only one thing more mortifying than having an exclamation mark removed by an editor: an exclamation mark added in. ~ Lynne Truss

Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both. ~ Criss Jami

All great ideas should be followed by an exclamation mark - a warning signal similar to the skull and crossbones drawn on high-voltage transformers. ~ Emile M. Cioran

It's always nice to end your sentences with an exclamation mark, and not a comma. ~ Joey Santiago

Thus called upon, he took courage: the sursum corda of an extravagant belch straightened him upright, and he answered, - Whfffck? Whether this was an approach to discussion he had devised himself, or a subtle adaptation of the Socratic method of questioning perfected in the local athenaeums which he attended until closing time, was not to be known; for the answer was,

- Stand aside.

- Here, don't goway. Here, how do youfffk. . He licked a lip and commenced again, putting out a hand. - My name Boyma. . he managed, summoning himself for the challenge of recognition. - And you must be Gro… go… raggly!

He seemed to have struggled up on that word from behind; and he finished with the triumph of having knocked it over the head. He did in fact look down, as though it might be lying there at his feet. It was such a successful combat that he decided to renew it. - Go. . gro. . gorag… His hand found a wrist, and closed thereon. Bells sounded, from a church somewhere near. - Go. . ro. . grag. . But the sharp heel of a hand delivered to the side of his head stopped him, and he dropped against the wall with no exclamation of surprise whatever. ~ William Gaddis

If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Never use three exclamation points when one will do. ~ Christine Edwards

People don't come to therapy for exclamation; they come for experience. ~ Frieda Fromm-Reichmann

He never spoke a word; yet my entire body was aflame. With shameful joy in my heart, I trembled as I moved against his hands, seeking more of the delicious rapture he was giving me. He played me like a stringed instrument, awakening within me a harmony that I had never known existed, producing profound and unimagined tunes.
When I felt him enter me I clung to him, pressing him ever closer, our two bodies fused as one. As he moved with me towards the brink of ecstasy, I was overwhelmed by an intense need that until that moment had never been recognized. All at once, just as I heard his own fevered exclamation, I felt the core of my womanhood explode with pleasure, as if my body had splintered into a thousand brilliant fragments of sensation and light. ~ Syrie James

November 4, 1987 Chicago I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read I LOVE KILLING COMMUNISTS. The word love was replaced by a heart shape I'm guessing they'll put on the typewriter keyboard any day now, right beside the exclamation point. The bumper sticker was on a Ford Fairlane on Montrose Avenue. ~ David Sedaris

Sentence should end with. Life should end with! Live life on exclamation. ~ Laura Freed

People complain about my exclamation points, but I honestly think that's the way people think. I don't think people think in essays; it's one exclamation point to another. ~ Tom Wolfe

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. ~ Terry Pratchett

hadn't grown into being a woman, she had become a woman with an exclamation mark, the sort of hardy feminine brute of the Pleistocene from which all women, great and frail, are descended. ~ J. Ryan Stradal

Samson's grace and surefootedness at breakneck paces was the closest Roxleigh had ever come to some semblance of peace in his life. His head was never clearer, his nerves were never calmer, and his mind was never more unbound than when he rode Samson. He listened to the horse's steady breathing, the exertion of his exhalations, and the steady beat of his hooves, punctuated by the swift silence of the jumps and the exclamation of the landing, like a staccato symphony. His mind unfurled its stressed tethers with the smooth action of Samson at full speed. ~ Jenn LeBlanc

No, explanation is not needed – only exclamation, a wondering heart, awakened, surprised, feeling the mystery of life each moment. Then, and only then, you know what truth is. And truth liberate ~ Osho

This is what they mean by epiphanies. I am almost thinking in exclamation points. ~ Claire Hennessy

She moved with such purpose it was as though she walked with exclamation marks. ~ Gail Carriger

I do not think it is logical to try and outsmart the smartest people. Instead, my weapons are irony and paradox. The joy of life is partly in the strange and unexpected. It is in the constant exclamation 'Who would have thought it?' ~ Hugh Jackman

After years of having a dog, you know him. You know the meaning of his snuffs and grunts and barks. Every twitch of the ears is a question or statement, every wag of the tail is an exclamation. ~ Robert McCammon

If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the "form of funny," which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness. ~ Chuck Klosterman

Insufferable woman!" was her immediate exclamation. "Worse than I had supposed. Absolutely insufferable! Knightley! - I could not have believed it. Knightley! - never seen him in her life before, and call him Knightley! - and discover that he is a gentleman! ~ Jane Austen

A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point. Thats basic spelling that every woman ought to know. ~ Mistinguett

Rosethorn had gone to her room the moment Niko started to cough. Now she returned with her syrup and a firm look in her eye. "I thought you were having trouble last night. Drink this." She poured some into a cup and held it out to him.
Niko looked at it as if she offered him rotten fish. "I am fine. I am per-" He couldn't even finish the sentence for coughing.
"It's not bad," said Tris, crossing her fingers behind her back. "Really, tastes like-like mangoes."
Niko looked at her, then took the cup and downed its contents. The four watched with interest as his cheeks turned pale, then scarlet. "That's terrible (exclamation point)" he cried, his voice a thin squeak.
"Maybe I was thinking of some other syrup," Tris remarked with a straight face. ~ Tamora Pierce

People who relate what they believe to be new and startling information like to have such information received with exclamations of astonishment and admiration. ~ Barbara Mertz

I can't wait to play the Hammerstein shows. Things have been exploding in the last week, and that's going to be the exclamation point. ~ Trey Anastasio

Extroverts want us to have fun, because they assume we want what they want. And sometimes we do. But "fun" itself is a "bright" word, the kind of word that comes with flashing lights and an exclamation point! One of Merriam-Webster's definitions of "fun" is "violent or excited activity or argument." The very word makes me want to sit in a dimly lit room with lots of pillows - by myself. ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

Cut out all these exclamation jokes. An explanation point is like laughing at your own joke. I'm going to delete you from my contacts if you keep sending solely emoji texts. You're a grown-ass man. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

If the mystical lovers of the arts, who consider all criticism dissection and all dissection destruction of enjoyment, thought logically, an exclamation like "Goodness alive!" would be the best criticism of the most deserving work of art. There are critiques which say nothing but that, only they do so more extensively. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Jesus Christ: A common exclamation indicating surprise, disgust, anger or bewilderment. ~ Chaz Bufe

Mario, I wrote, to give myself courage, had not taken away the world, he had taken away only himself. And you are not a woman of thirty years ago. You are of today, take hold of today, don't regress, don't lose yourself, keep a tight grip. Above all, don't give into distracted or malicious or angry monologues. Eliminate the exclamation points. He's gone, you're still here. You'll no longer enjoy the gleam of his eyes, of his words, but so what? Organize your defenses, preserve your wholeness, don't let yourself break like an ornament, you're not a knickknack, no woman is a knickknack. La femme rompue, ah, rompue, the destroyed woman, destroyed, shit. My job, I thought, is to demonstrate that one can remain healthy. Demonstrate it to myself, no one else. If I am exposed to lizards, I will fight the lizards. If I am exposed to ants, I will fight the ants. If I am exposed to thieves, I will fight the thieves. If I am exposed to myself, I will fight myself. ~ Elena Ferrante

We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William - with his new glasses on his nose - could linger and read the books, at every title he discovered he let out exclamations of happiness, either because he knew the work, or because he had been seeking it for a long time, or finally because he had never heard it mentioned and was highly excited and titillated. In short, for him every book was like a fabulous animal that he was meeting in a strange land. ~ Umberto Eco

Reg coughed repressively.Habit had made of the standard nouns and adjectives in his own vocabulary something merely conventional,like italics or points of exclamation.He sometimes found Laurie's conversation highly obscene,and would have voiced his disapproval to anyone he had liked less. ~ Mary Renault

Once she had thrown a square of birch bark into the fire when her father came in the door. He might then have asked her why her quill pen had shaped a row of straight and crooked question marks and after each one an exclamation point
in rows of ten, perhaps forty running along
?! ?! ?! ?!
arranged in pairs or couples. If he had asked her what is this folderol and what can this nonsense mean she would have said the same she said when shaping them with her pen, one pair, one couple after another. Each question mark stands for my ignorance and asks if I may learn and know the answer. And each exclamation point stands for my surprise at how little I know, my amazement at my vast ignorance, my utter astonishment at how much there is for me to learn. ~ Carl Sandburg

I like you, period."
"I like you, exclamation point. ~ Olivia Cunning

She thought in exclamation points ~ L.M. Montgomery

I will dance a little. I will move with the wind. I will give my body to my love and celebrate that we have substance beyond the idea of ourselves. We can move. We can touch. This is my physical exclamation point. This is how I can awaken my mind to the possibilities in the day. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

That first bite of fat-streaked tuna sushi was a culinary epiphany. It was as though I had been wearing a mitten on my tongue all those years and had suddenly taken it off. The velvety fish had a rare beef-like core surrounded by a creamy richness from the marbled fat. The lightly vinegared rice and earthy soy were like exclamation points at the end of a perfect sentence. The wasabi added a final unexpected prickle of heat that kindled my desire for more. That night I promised myself that one day I would eat sushi in Japan. ~ Victoria Abbott Riccardi

I used to enjoy using dots where they would be least expected, not at the end of a sentence but in the middle, creating the effect ... of a skipped beat. It seemed to me the mind reacted - first! ... in dots, dashes, and exclamation points, then rationalized, drew up a brief, with periods. ~ Tom Wolfe

Men can't use exclamation points in texts... it's weird. We also don't say [stuff] like 'yay'. ~ Jacinta Howard

she was the kind of woman
who only gave herself away in small doses,
leaving men wandering like little children
at all that she was.
she tortured them with the sound
of her fading footsteps,
each one an exclamation mark
to a sentence the world tragically
instilled in her long ago
"find something beautiful, then
let it go. ~ Christopher Poindexter

Exclamation points are the most irritating of all. Look! they say, look at what I just said! How amazing is my thought! It is like being forced to watch someone else's small child jumping up and down crazily in the center of the living room shouting to attract attention. If a sentence really has something of importance to say, something quite remarkable, it doesn't need a mark to point it out. And if it is really, after all, a banal sentence needing more zing, the exclamation point simply emphasizes its banality! ~ Lewis Thomas

Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Zouelle had forgotten how tiring it was listening to a Neverfell at full pace, like being bludgeoned with exclamation marks. ~ Frances Hardinge

When Harry told of Wormtail piercing his arm with the dagger, however, Sirius let out a vehement exclamation; and Dumbledore stood up so quickly that Harry started. Dumbledore walked around the desk and told Harry to stretch out his arm. Harry showed them both the place where his robes were torn, and the cut beneath them.

'He said my blood would make him stronger than if he'd used someone else's,' Harry told Dumbledore. 'He said the protection my – my mother left in me – he'd have it, too. And he was right – he could touch me without hurting himself, he touched my face.'

For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore's eyes. But next second, Harry was sure he had imagined it, for when Dumbledore had returned to his seat behind the desk, he looked as old and weary as Harry had ever seen him. ~ J.K. Rowling

The almost-always-ghastly exclamation point has been lately compared to canned laughter. ~ George F. Will

There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness. Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity; and pausing there she looked out to meet that stroke of the Lighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was her stroke, for watching them in this mood always at this hour one could not help attaching oneself to one thing especially of the things one saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her stroke. Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at - that light, for example. ~ Virginia Woolf

You feel your own life - your heart, your mind, your body, your sexuality, the people and things you are connected to - and you spontaneously fill with the exclamation: "God, it feels great to be alive!" That's delight. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

The Russians opened his mouth and with a pair of pliers the Germans used for other purposes they seized his tongue and yanked. The pain made tears spring to his eyes and he said, or rather shouted, the word coño, cunt. With the pliers in his mouth the exclamation was transformed, coming out as the word kunst. The Russian who spoke German stared at him in surprise. The Sevillan shouted Kunst, Kunst, and wept in pain. The word Kunst, in German, means art, and that was how the bilingual soldier heard it and he said that the son of a bitch was an artist or something. The soldiers who were torturing the Sevillan removed the pliers along with a little piece of tongue and waited, momentarily hypnotized by the discovery. Art. The thing that soothes wild beasts. ~ Roberto Bolano

[She was] like an exclamation mark in human form. ~ Jenna Evans Welch

Some of the shrewdest insight into natural processes have been greeted at the outset by the exclamation 'But that's ridiculous'. ~ Lewis Thomas

Please come to Destination I'm not doin well Exclamation ~ Nicki Minaj

I'm no more than a comma in life. I who am a colon. Thou, thou art my exclamation. ~ Clarice Lispector

Never trust an exclamation point. ~ Linda Urban

He was not thinking of Maddie I-Live-To-Make-Your-Life-Miserable Freemont in terms of sexuality. He was not attracted to her in the least. Period and exclamation point. ~ Kelly Moran

I'm...um...I've got guests in my studio. I don't know how they undid my secure barricade made of cardboard signs that said KEEP OUT! and SECRET ROOM! in all caps with an exclamation point, but it's my program director, Lauren, and some man I've never seen bef - but no, I have seen him before. ~ Joseph Fink

When you two go out walking, do you like to have the people on the street say, 'Look at these nice twins'?" Immediately the little girl exclaimed, "No, I want them to say, 'Look at these two different people!'" This spontaneous exclamation, obviously revealing something very important to the little girl, cannot be explained by saying that the child wanted attention; for she would have gotten more attention if she had dressed as a twin. It shows, rather, her demand to be a person in her own right, to have personal identity - a need which was more important to her even than attention or prestige. ~ Rollo May

Woman: Wow-Man!

A woman is an exclamation mark on the work of creation! When all was said and done, GOD made her - the crescendo of all that was created.

A woman is the solution to the first problem GOD identified in man: loneliness. Loneliness is like sin, in
that it can alter the entire existence of a man - it can reduce a man, full of significance, to absolute nothing. For sin, GOD gave Jesus. For loneliness, GOD gave Woman!

A woman is a multiplier effect. Shewill take any little and make it a great nation. She incubates dreams, broods over them, stretches them and expands them beyond your wildest dreams.

A good woman is a secret weapon. You are better because of her. She increases you just by reason of being there. It's so clearly stated "He who finds a wife - the one who has a woman on his side - finds a good thing and automatically obtains favors from
the Lord.

You must love on her, be sweet to her, care for her, respect her, involve her, honor her, give her room, be patient with her, be good to her, be kind to her and watch your life completely blossom with beauty.

Woman, you are a wonder! Own it, love it, honor it, feel wonderful because of it, walk in beauty because of it, shine brighter because of it. ~ TemitOpe Ibrahim

She stared at him, at his face. Simply stared as the scales fell from her eyes. "Oh, my God," she whispered, the exclamation so quiet not even he would hear. She suddenly saw-saw it all-all that she'd simply taken for granted.
Men like him protected those they loved, selflessly, unswervingly, even unto death.
The realization rocked her. Pieces of the jigsaw of her understanding of him fell into place. He was hanging to consciousness by a thread. She had to be sure-and his shields, his defenses were at their weakest now.
Looking down at her hands, pressed over the nearly saturated pad, she hunted for the words, the right tone. Softly said, "My death, even my serious injury, would have freed you from any obligation to marry me. Society would have accepted that outcome, too."
He shifted, clearly in pain. She sucked in a breath-feeling his pain as her own-then he clamped the long fingers of his right hand about her wrist, held tight.
So tight she felt he was using her as an anchor to consciousness, to the world.
His tone, when he spoke, was harsh. "Oh, yes-after I'd expended so much effort keeping you safe all these years, safe even from me, I was suddenly going to stand by and let you be gored by some mangy bull." He snorted, soft, low. Weakly. He drew in a slow, shallow breath, lips thin with pain, but determined, went on, "You think I'd let you get injured when finally after all these long years I at last understand that the reason you've always ~ Stephanie Laurens

Reepicheep: Unhand the tail. Aslan the Great gave me this tail and no one, repeat, no one, touches the tail. Period, exclamation mark! ~ C.S. Lewis

I'm guessing this elaborate kidnapping isn't to force me into that tea I rudely turned down a while back, is it?" I ask, my shaky tone betraying my will to sound calm and composed.

She flashes me a fanged smile, but the fangs recede so quickly that I almost worry I simply imagined it.

"You're awfully calm for a girl being abducted. This sort of thing happen to you very often?"

"It's usually the start of a bad day. In this case, it's just the exclamation mark to punctuate the bad day," I state evenly, getting my voice under control.

She moves, and I startle a little. I see her grinning from her profile like my fear is pleasing to her. I knew she was crazy. ~ Kristy Cunning

I looked up its history, and, surprisingly, it has quite a history. You know how in Europe they make you study a lot of stuff about the old alchemists and all that kind of stuff, to give you an historical grounding.'

'Yes?'

Kemp laughed. 'You haven't got a witch around your place by any chance?'

'Eh!' The exclamation almost burned Marson's lips. He fought hard to hide the tremendousness of that shock.

Kemp laughed again. 'According to 'Die Geschichte der Zauberinnen' by the Austrian, Karl Gloeck, Hydrodendon Barelia is the modem name for the sinister witch's weed of antiquity. I'm not talking about the special witches of our Christian lore, with their childish attributes, but the old tribe of devil's creatures that came out of prehistory, regular full-blooded sea witches. It seems when each successive body gets old, they choose a young woman's body, attune themselves to it by living with the victim, and take possession any time after midnight of the first full moon period following the 21st of June. Witch's weed is supposed to make the entry easier. Gloeck says... why, what's the matter, sir?'

His impulse, his wild and terrible impulse, was to babble the whole story to Kemp. With a gigantic effort, he stopped himself; for Kemp, though he might talk easily of witches, was a scientist to the depths of his soul.

("The Witch") ~ A.E. Van Vogt

The knowledgeable person lives with a question mark '?' and the man of awe and wonder lives with an exclamation mark. ~ Rajneesh

Lockwood gave a sudden exclamation; when I looked at him, his eyes were shining. 'On second thoughts, we can scrap my last suggestion,' he said. 'Stuff the mingling. Who wants to do that? Boring. George - this library. Where is it? ~ Jonathan Stroud

Maxine will sometimes compliment us on our hair or other aspects of our scruffy appearance. The next day, or even later the same day, she'll send an all-caps e-mail asking why a certain form is not on her desk. This will prompt a peppy reply, one barely stifling a howl of fear:

Hey Maxine!
The document you want was actually put in your in-box yesterday around lunchtime. I also e-mailed it to you and Russell. Let me know if you can't find it!
Thanks!
Laars

P.S. I'm also attaching it again as a Word doc, just in case.

There's so much wrong here: the fake-vague around lunchtime, the nonsensical Thanks, the quasi-casual postscript. The exclamation points look downright psychotic. ~ Ed Park

God is not an exclamation point. He is, at his best, a semicolon, connecting people, and generating what Aldous Huxley called "human grace." Somewhere along the way, we've lost sight of this. ~ Eric Weiner

Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, 'this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!' But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in public company-I mean hell. ~ John Adams

Double-clicking on his inbox, Jason noted that one of the three messages was from Suzy, aka ButterfliesInMyTummy, and his mood lifted. It was the fourth or fifth message they'd exchanged, and they were just starting to move beyond the tedious small-talk stage. He skimmed through the message, growing increasingly impatient. Suzy favoured those little face icons. The whole page was littered with them – smiley faces, sad faces, surprised faces, embarrassed faces. Why couldn't she just use words like everyone else? She also put five or six exclamation marks after a sentence, or added extra vowels to words, so everything was sooooooooo much fun or soooooooooo boring. It wound Jason up when people couldn't write properly. He wasn't asking for brain of Britain, but he liked a woman to be able to write a sentence that started with a capital letter and ended with a full stop and at least made an attempt at the Queen's English. At least it wasn't in text speak. He refused to answer the messages that spelled thanks 'tnx'. Britain didn't go through two World Wars so that the English language could be mutilated beyond recognition. ~ Tammy Cohen

The kiss wasn't an intrusion; it was a question. Morrigan answered it with an exclamation mark. ~ P.C. Cast

Running a bit late meet at my place around 7?'
Smiling at the phone, my fingers fumbling over the keypad quickly,
'Yup-see you there!'
I deleted the exclamation mark and counted to thirty before I allowed myself to press send. ~ Jessica Shirvington

He stood in the doorway of her office. He was, as always, the consummate scoundrel. He leaned against the doorframe, smiling - almost smirking - at her, as if he knew how rapidly her heart had started beating.

If that was how they were going to do this…

She simply raised an eyebrow in his direction. "Oh," she said with a sniff. "It's you."

"You're not fooling anyone," he said.

She could feel the corner of her mouth twitch up. Last time she'd seen him, he'd kissed her so thoroughly she had not yet recovered.

"I'm not?"

"I heard it most distinctly," he told her. "You might have said 'It's you,' but there was a distinct exclamation mark at the end. In fact, I think there were two."

"Oh, dear." Free looked down, fluttering her eyelashes demurely. "Is my punctuation showing once more?"

His eyes darkened and he took a step into her office. "Don't hide it on my account," he growled. "You have the most damnably beautiful punctuation that I have ever seen. ~ Courtney Milan

It's not just an exclamation, but it's a rejection of everything to do with Christmas, with the spirit of Christmas, with gift-giving, with generosity. ~ Patrick Stewart

I read once that this man was in the chair and when the electrocutioner threw the switch the smoke came out of the man's head and formed a question mark over him and everybody said it was an omen, that maybe he didn't commit the murder they killed him for."
"Well," I said, "if they catch me, there won't be any question mark. There'll be an exclamation point. ~ Elliott Chaze

Wake up, my darling, and look at me," said Valentine with her adorable smile.
Maximilien uttered a loud exclamation, and frantic, doubtful, dazzled, as though by a celestial vision, he fell upon his knees.

-www.online-literature.com/dumas/crist... ~ Alexandre Dumas

Some people on bus seats shake at the shoulders,
Stoned Elvises trying to dance after the gig.

Some walk into the rain and look like they're smiling,
Running mascara writes sad bitter letters on their faces.

Some drive their cars into lay-bys or park edges
And cradle the steering-wheel looking like headless drivers.

Some sink their open mouths into feather pillows
And tremble on the bed like beached dolphins.

Some people are bent as question marks when they weep
And some are straight as exclamation marks.

Some are soaking in emotional dew when they wake,
Salt street maps etched into their faces.

Some find rooms and fall to the floor as if praying to Allah.
Noiseless
Faces contorted in that silent scream that seems like laughter.

Why is there not a tissue-giver? A man who looks for tears,
Who makes the finest silk tissues and offers them for free?

It seems to me that around each corner, beneath each stone,
Are humans quietly looking for a place to cry on their own. ~ Lemn Sissay

Illumination

Always there is something more to know

what lingers at the edge of thought

awaiting illumination as in

this second-hand book full

of annotations daring the margins in pencil

a light stroke as if

the writer of these small replies

meant not to leave them forever

meant to erase

evidence of this private interaction

Here a passage underlined there

a single star on the page

as in a night sky cloud-swept and hazy

where only the brightest appears

a tiny spark I follow

its coded message try to read in it

the direction of the solitary mind

that thought to pencil in

a jagged arrow It

is a bolt of lightning

where it strikes

I read the line over and over

as if I might discern

the little fires set

the flames of an idea licking the page

how knowledge burns Beyond

the exclamation point

its thin agreement angle of surprise

there are questions the word why

So much is left
untold Between

the printed words and the self-conscious scrawl

between what is said and not

white space framing the story

the way the past unwritten

eludes us So much

is implication the ~ Natasha Trethewey

Love the overuse of exclamation points!!!! Yes!!! They add a lot of emphasis!!! to what your character is saying!!! ~ L.R.W. Lee

What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man. ~ Terry Pratchett

Raised eyebrows , Is she a billet ?
The smile, a natural born sniper?
The lips, a CPR the mystic needs
Aura, like the moon during the day
Nous, like an exclamation mark with a purpose
Not an ordinary mortal she is
but an incantatory healing power ~ Kshanasurya

Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. ~ Elmore Leonard

Yum-O! I say this if something is so good that 'yum' just isn't enough of an exclamation. The accent is on the 'O' as in, 'Oh! That is so good!' ~ Rachael Ray

Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark. ~ Amos Oz

Speak and live in simple sentences. Bring closure
put a period to
those experiences that you don't want to carry on forever and ever. Use commas in those places where you're still growing ... and use exclamation points at the end of every lesson. ~ Iyanla Vanzant

His own exclamation: "Women should be free - as free as we are," struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as nonexistent. "Nice" women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and generous-minded men like himself were therefore - in the heat of argument - the more chivalrously ready to concede it to them. Such verbal generosities were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern. ~ Edith Wharton

Ellipses," according to Henry, are "fucking excellent." The exclamation mark is just a weird guy who talks too loudly. ~ Cath Crowley

Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such governments; and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a nation should apply itself to reform the system. ~ Thomas Paine

With large eyes full of tears, but said nothing. 'This here young lady,' said the Gryphon, 'she wants for to know your history, she do.' 'I'll tell it her,' said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone: 'sit down, both of you, and don't speak a word till I've finished.' So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice thought to herself, 'I don't see how he can even finish, if he doesn't begin.' But she waited patiently. 'Once,' said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, 'I was a real Turtle.' These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by an occasional exclamation of 'Hjckrrh!' from the Gryphon, and the constant heavy sobbing ~ Lewis Carroll

I mean, you don't just love people, you must LOVE them with exclamation points. ~ Ray Bradbury

In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly. ~ Lynne Truss

The ladies egged him on; in Eve's name, they dared him; so he made love with discreet verbs and light nouns, delicate conjunctions. They begged; they defied him to define ... define everything. They could not be scandalized - impossible, they said. Indecent prepositions such as in, on, up, merely made them smile, and the roundest exclamation broke upon them like a bubble's kiss, a butterfly's. Smooth and creamy adjectives enabled them to lick their lips upon the crudest story. How charmingly you speak, Reverend Furber, how much you've seen of this wicked world, and how alive you are to it, they said. ~ William H Gass

The key to a successful relationship isn't just in the words, it's in the choice of punctuation. When you're in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations. ~ David Levithan

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Silence, the breath
inside the body of what is, sings an unbroken tone struck
in the key of nil. This endless untitled exclamation
implicit and from everywhere at once. ~ Karen Solie

A mind without a secret is with a question mark! A mind with so many secrets shall attract an exclamation one day! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

A pretty face had been damaged by acne scars and she wore and extra forty pounds on her frame like a threat. Her eyes were dull with anger disguised as apathy. If she kept on her current path, she'd grow into the type of person who fed her kids Doritos for breakfast and purchased angry bumper stickers with lots of exclamation points. But right now, she was just another in a long line of pissed-off small-town girls with a shitty outlook. ~ Dennis Lehane