Line Breaks Quotes

After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Charles Bukowski's skinny, chatty, muttering-stuttering antiverses. Impossibly, Mark's words make music, the faraway strains of an irresistible jazz. It's plain to any reader, within a few lines - well, go read the poems and see, Marcus Ahearn traffics with the ineffable. He makes the mind of the speaker present, in that here-and-now where the reader actually reads - that place. Such a rare thing. Samuel Beckett. Jean Follain, Ionesco - the composer Billy Strayhorn. Mark calls his process "psychic improvisation" and referred me to the painter Paul Klee; the term was Klee's. "You just get out a pen and a notebook and let your mind go long," he told me. ~ Denis Johnson

When people start talking about enjambment and line endings, I always shut them up. This is not something to talk about, this is a private matter, it's up to the poet. ~ James Tate

I write because…

I write because I love the art and the magic of Literature.

I write because it keeps me safe, sane, and connected to you.

I write because it takes me to the places I want to go and those who wish to join me in the journey; may grasp my hand and my heart; in this stroll through this moment of time.

I write because when no one was there, the word was there: The word has always been and always will be the preeminent being in my universe.

I write because it allows me; to allow you to be understood and we are joined for a moment in time.

I do not write because it comes from a place of grammatical perfection; free of line breaks in perfected poetry; for my history is one of line breaks and imperfections.

I do not come to you from a place of polished and perfected; educated and critiqued.

No! I come to you from a place of raw, real, gutsy, and riveting. What I give you is raw, real, gutsy and riveting; with all of its imperfections and inconsistencies.

You have been touched, you have been curious, and you have been intrigued; you have come back looking, longing, expecting or not…

But then suddenly you were surprised; surprised that you could be moved; surprised that your preconceived ideas had been shattered by one who writes because… ~ Suzanne Steele

Sometimes I think people think poetry must be filled with flowery language, thesaurus-driven vocabulary or the dreaded "purple prose," which is often prevalent in my genre...But oftentimes the best poetry isn't difficult to understand at all. It's the juxtaposition of the words. The line breaks. The enjambs. The shape of the poem. Or the double meanings the positioning of the words make the reader feel or think or do. ~ R.B. O'Brien

There's a great deal of stripping away; in early drafts, I may say the same thing two or three times, and each may be appropriate, but I try to pick the best and improve it. I work on sound a great deal, and I will change a word or two, revise punctuation and line breaks, looking for the sound I want. ~ Donald Hall

Everything was a broken line for me in those days. I was slipped into the empty spaces between words. ~ Betsy Cornwell

I tended to find lines of poetry beautiful only when I encountered them quoted in prose, in the essays my professors had assigned in college, where the line breaks were replaced with slashes, so that what was communicated was less a particular poem than the echo of poetic possibility. Insofar as I was interested in the arts, I was interested in the disconnect between my experience of actual artworks and the claims made on their behalf; the closest I'd come to having a profound experience of art was probably the experience of this distance, a profound experience of the absence of profundity. ~ Ben Lerner

I sat wondering: Why is there always this deep shade of melancholy over the fields arid river banks, the sky and the sunshine of our country? And I came to the conclusion that it is because with us Nature is obviously the more important thing. The sky is free, the fields limitless; and the sun merges them into one blazing whole. In the midst of this, man seems so trivial. He comes and goes, like the ferry-boat, from this shore to the other; the babbling hum of his talk, the fitful echo of his song, is heard; the slight movement of his pursuit of his own petty desires is seen in the world's market-places: but how feeble, how temporary, how tragically meaningless it all seems amidst the immense aloofness of the Universe!



The contrast between the beautiful, broad, unalloyed peace of Nature - calm, passive, silent, unfathomable, - and our own everyday worries - paltry, sorrow-laden, strife-tormented, puts me beside myself as I keep staring at the hazy, distant, blue line of trees which fringe the fields across the river.



Where Nature is ever hidden, and cowers under mist and cloud, snow and darkness, there man feels himself master; he regards his desires, his works, as permanent; he wants to perpetuate them, he looks towards posterity, he raises monuments, he writes biographies; he even goes the length of erecting tombstones over the dead. So busy is he that he has not time to consider how many monuments crumble, how often names a ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I do not make any apologies for my manner or personality. I come from a long line of very strong, black African-American women who neither bend nor bow. I haven't had very good modeling in submission. ~ Faye Wattleton

Why do I find it hard to write the next line? ~ Gary Kemp

She couldn't help stealing a covert glance at the exposed part of his torso, the flesh so firm and tanned it appeared to have been cast in bronze. Lower down near his hip, the satiny brown skin merged into a line of ivory. The sight was so intriguing- and intimate- that she felt her stomach tighten pleasurably. Leaning over him as she was, she couldn't help breathing in the dusty, sweaty, sun-heated scent of him. A stunning urge seized her, to touch that brown-and-white borderline with her fingertip, trace a path across his body. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Except under dire circumstances or as a day job to support creative endeavors, a smart person is not so likely to want to wait tables, file forms, work on an assembly line, or sell shoes. It isn't that he disparages these lines of work as beneath his dignity; rather, it is that he can see clearly how his days would be experienced as meaningless if he had to spend his time not thinking. ~ Eric Maisel

I'm starting to think that most villains aren't evil - they are just misundertood.
Or victims of that manipulative force: Love.
Love causes war and causes death, breaks souls and breaks lives. It runs people into the ground, makes them behave like moronic, immoral beasts, before it dances off, leaving only destruction in its wake - hearts blown wide open for the whole world to see.
Love puts the blame on the poor souls who succumb to it.
Love, that ultimate villainess. She makes examples of us all.
And yet we still come back for more.
We keep playing the role she gives us.
For one more chance to feel alive. ~ Karina Halle

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown. ~ Ross Perot

You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since-on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. ~ Charles Dickens

I had lost confidence and a sense of self. Who am I? Am I a person who cowers in fear at the back of a spin class, avoiding everyone's gaze? This uncertainty about who I am, this confusion over where I truly was in the time line of my illness and recovery, was ultimately the deeper source of the shame. A part of my soul believed that I would never be myself, the carefree, confident Susannah, again. ~ Susannah Cahalan

I'm big into fashion, so after swimming, when I hang up the Speedo, I definitely want to get into fashion and start designing my own clothing line. ~ Ryan Lochte

Laughter filled the line, the sound big and warm and primal. "We are family now, Bowen Knight! ~ Nalini Singh

A tree nowhere offers a straight line or a regular curve, but who doubts that root, trunk, boughs, and leaves embody geometry? ~ George Iles

The way to accomplish oneself as Guru Rinpoche Is all rooted in the Seven-Line Prayer. The seven consciousnesses of the basis,215 While on the path, become the seven branches of enlightenment.216 The result is perfected in the seven absolute treasures.217 In this way, with the sound of this vajra melody, The moment you invoke me, I, Padmasambhava, Have no choice but to come to bless you. ~ Thinley Norbu

We the people have never agreed on much of anything. ... [D]isunity is the through-line in the national plot. Not necessarily as a failing, but as a free people's privileged. ~ Sarah Vowell

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I was really the first-line editor of the 'House of Night' series. I didn't write that much of the story, and I didn't know what was happening until my mom finished the book and sent it to me because I wanted to read it with fresh eyes as a general reader would. ~ Kristin Cast

Sometimes, there aren't any good choices. Sometimes, making the right one is hard ... It's funny, but when you think about it, we're all broken. That's what life does. It knocks you down and breaks you and you either get back up again, or you don't. You either do things on your terms, or you don't. You let the bad things win, or you don't."
"You either let it break you, or you don't. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Evil is the chronic malady of the universe, and checked in one place, breaks forth in another. ~ Herman Melville

It is a melancholy reflection that liberty should be equally exposed to danger whether the government have too much power or too little power and that the line which divides these extremes should be so inaccurately defined by experience. ~ James Madison

When you're the guy behind the camera, you're aware of the reasons for the compromises or the changes that get made. As an actor, you go and do your thing, and someone else down the line then does all the math and goes, "We can't include that thing where he's pretending to be dumb and needling those people, because it takes a minute and a half, and it ruins the next scene. It doesn't make sense." If you're directing, you're the one doing that. ~ Casey Affleck

Sin is not about the personal imperfection of the self. Rather, sin is any act that breaks any of the relationships God declared very good in the beginning. ~ Lisa Sharon Harper

There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on the line. You have to head for the front and hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood. ~ Tim O'Brien

She'd tried her hand at most things, but drew the line at honesty. ~ Roddy Doyle

The windblast sent people to the ground. A thunderhead of smoke and ash came moving toward them. The light drained dead away, bright day gone. They ran and fell and tried to get up, men with toweled heads, a woman blinded by debris, a woman calling someone's name. The only light was vestigial now, the light of what comes after, carried in the residue of smashed matter, in the ash ruins of what was various and human, hovering in the air above.

He took one step and then the next, smoke blowing over him. He felt rubble underfoot and there was motion everywhere, people running, things flying past. He walked by the Easy Park sign, the Breakfast Special and Three Suits Cheap, and they went running past, losing shoes and money. He saw a woman with her hand in the air, like running to catch a bus.

He went past a line of fire trucks and they stood empty now, headlights flashing. He could not find himself in the things he saw and heard. Two men ran by with a stretcher, someone facedown, smoke seeping out of his hair and clothes. He watched them move into the stunned distance. That's where everything was, all around him, falling away, street signs, people, things he could not name.

Then he saw a shirt come down out of the sky. He walked and saw it fall, arms waving like nothing in this life. ~ Don DeLillo

Sometimes you've got to draw a line between having all the options and being a slave to the things, using them every time you play the guitar. I'm trying to keep a real inconsistency to the pedals so that it is something new every time. ~ Joshua Homme

Indeed, the line between perceiving and hallucinating is not as crisp as we like to think. In a sense, when we look at the world, we are hallucinating all the time. One could almost regard perception as the act of choosing the one hallucination that best fits the incoming data. ~ V.S. Ramachandran

There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed or in some way musically measured,
is, in form as well as substance, poetry; and a volume which should contain the condensed wisdom of mankind need not have one rhythmless line. ~ Henry David Thoreau

All thinking is indeed Art. Where the logician draws the line, where the premises stop which are the result of cognition - where judgment begins, there Art begins. But more than this even the perception of the mind is judgment again, and consequently Art; and at last, even the perception by the senses as well. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

He finally saw the line went up into the big sycamore, gave it a tug and then studied on the whole thing while he toked on his pipe.
"That's exactly where I want it to be" he finally said and he went back to holding his pole like he was doing before, while looking at the creek.
"Up there wrapped around a limb?"
"I guess you ain't heard of squirrel fishing. ~ Charles Davis

I hope you don't mind that we're crashing," Wes says. "I'm trying to escape a hunting expedition. No joke. Dad thinks I'll be more of a man if I can blow a rabbit's head off. And my response? 'Sorry, Dad, but as tempting as it is to obliterate Peter Cottontail first thing on a Sunday morning, I promised Camelia I'd swing by her house, because she's been begging to abuse my body for weeks.'"
"And speaking of being delusional," Kimmie segues, "did I mention that my plan to reunite my parents was totally dumb?" She leads us into my bedroom and then closes the door behind her. "They could smell the setup before their water glasses were even filled."
"How's that?" I ask, taking a seat on my bed.
"The violinist I arranged to serenade them at the table might have been a tip-off," she begins. "Either that, or the wrist corsage I ordered for my mom. I handpicked the begonias and had the florist deliver it right to the table."
"Don't forget about the oyster appetizer you preordered for the occasion," Wes adds.
"Because, you know what they say about oysters, right?" An evil grin breaks out across her face. 'I know, I know." She sighs, before I can even say anything. "I may have gone a little overboard, but what can I say? I'm a dorkus extremus. Hence my outit du jour." She's wearing a Catholic schoolgirl's uniform, a pair of clunky black glasses (with the requisite amount of tape on the bridge), and a cone-shaped dunce cap.
"Yes, but you're a dorkus extremu ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

If we strike a line to the N.W. from Sydney to Wellington Valley, we shall find that little change takes place in the geological features of the country. ~ Charles Sturt

...political correctness is ... not about tolerance; it's about "toe the party line or it's the gulag for you, Comrade." - Solbury Tor ~ C.J. Moran

Have a good time"
Yesterday it was my birthday.
I hung one more year on the line.
I should be depressed.
My life's a mess.
But I'm having a good time.
I've been loving and loving and loving.
I'm exhausted from loving so well
I should go to bed.
But a voice in my head says,
"Ah, what the hell ~ Paul Simon

Where is the line between art and pornography? But there's always been a huge overlap between the two; you can see scenes of copulation on Greek vases and Indian temples. What's more, many works of art have seemed pornographic without nakedness. Many of us are tempted to talk as if art = good, pornography = bad. Yet that's wrong too. Much art is poor, while the novels of the Marquis de Sade are pornography taken to a brilliant, horrifying and extraordinary peak. - Alastair Macaulay, NY Times article, Nakedness in Dance, August 16, 2012 ~ Alastair Macaulay

If I'm broken, the break will be clean and easily mended. If he breaks, I'm not sure if there will be enough pieces to approximate. I can afford to go along with what he thinks will protect him. I can have this, and I can give him what he thinks he needs, even if he may deserve better. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

[I]t seems to me that a lot of the stranger ideas people have about medicine derive from an emotional struggle with the very notion of a pharmaceutical industry. Whatever our political leanings, we all feel nervous about profit taking any role in the caring professions, but that feeling has nowhere to go. Big pharma is evil; I would agree with that premise. But because people don't understand exactly how big pharma is evil, their anger gets diverted away from valid criticisms - its role in distorting data, for example, or withholding lifesaving AIDS drugs from the developing world - and channeled into infantile fantasies. "Big pharma is evil," goes the line of reasoning; "therefore homeopathy works and the MMR vaccine causes autism." This is probably not helpful. ~ Ben Goldacre

I think this is an awfully immoral job of ours. I do, really. Think how we spoil the digestions of the public." "Ah, yes - but think how earnestly we strive to put them right again. We undermine 'em with one hand and build 'em with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody's Piper Parritch we make up into a package and market as Bunbury's Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompayne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over - once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands - including you and me. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

The bottom line is that for Wellhausen and many other biblical scholars before and since, the Pentateuch as we know it (an important qualification) was not completed until the postexilic period (after the Israelites were allowed to return to their homeland from Babylon beginning in 539 BC). There were certainly long-standing written documents and oral traditions that the postexilic Israelites drew upon, which biblical scholars continue to discuss vigorously, but the Pentateuch as we know it was formed as a response to the Babylonian exile. The specifics of Wellhausen's work no longer dominate the academic landscape, but the postexilic setting for the Pentateuch is the dominant view among biblical scholars today. ~ Peter Enns

We don't stop, not even when we reach the finish line. It's a journey for life, Neve. ~ Sarra Manning

Although he was not concerned, the Maestro had taught him to use his head in any threatening situation. Always take the line of least resistance. Never let useless emotions cloud your judgment. "'Twould ~ Elliott Baker

The House okayed the gasoline tax cut, which will increase the deficit, line the pockets of the oil companies, and hurt the environment; Dole said that if there was just some way this could interfere with people's sex lives, it would be perfect legislation. ~ Bill Maher

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains. ~ Tennessee Williams

Especially in quail hunting, where the hunter is so focused on the bird that it makes everything else blurry. The bottom line in terms of bird hunting is what we call shooting zones. ~ Steven Hall

I think as a Canadian hockey player, you go through it in your mind so many times, being able to stand on that blue line and hear your national anthem play and being a gold medal champion, you dream of that. And then to be able to accomplish that and actually win a gold medal and represent your country its an amazing feeling. ~ Sidney Crosby

Losing the Internet has forced them to interact verbally instead of microblogging their lives, but a lot of them still talk in Tweets:
"Ugh! I'm standing in line at the post office."
"I'm not eating the crusts on my sandwich because apparently I'm five. ~ Wayne Gladstone

I'm proud of being a vaudevillian, the last of my line. A lot of people think my entertainment is candy-floss. Well, entertainment is too aggressive these days, all 'in your face'. ~ Eric Sykes

What we pluralists have to do is to say to the people standing on the faith line, particularly the young ones, no, pluralism is the wish of the creator. It is the greatest opportunity for humanity. ~ Eboo Patel

It makes me wonder if living under tragic circumstances inflects a person's sentences, irresistibly, with poetry. ~ Sara Baume

Here Mr. Tushman looked up at the audience. "Kinder than is necessary," he repeated. "What a marvelous line, isn't it? Kinder than is necessary. Because it's not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed. Why I love that line, that concept, is that it reminds me that we carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness. And what does that mean? How is that measured? You can't use a yardstick. It's like I was saying just before: it's not like measuring how much you've grown in a year. It's not exactly quantifiable, is it? How do we know we've been kind? What is being kind, anyway? ~ R.J. Palacio