Pedantically Sentences Quotes

What I'm really involved in when I'm writing is something that no one ever mentions when they see any play. Writing is like trying to make gunpowder out of chemicals. You have these words and sentences and the strange meanings and associations that are attached to the words and sentences, and you're somehow cooking these things all up so that they suddenly explode and have a powerful effect. That's what absorbs me from day to day in writing a play. ~ Wallace Shawn

That doesn't make any sense. Sorry. There's no known way of saying an English sentence in which you begin a sentence with "in" and emphasize it. Get me a jury and show me how you can say
"In July" and I'll go down on you. That's just idiotic, if you'll forgive me for saying so. It's just stupid ... "In July"; I'd love to know how you emphasize "In" in "In July". Impossible!
Meaningless! ~ Orson Welles

She stopped at a red light and turned to face him. "Look. You must know your eyes are truly distracting, and you keep LOOKING at me. I've also never talked to anyone who sounds like a movie trailer announcer before. Your voice is so cool. I'm sure you know that. It's probably part of your famousness. But here in this car it's unsettling, because I have this sensation you might suddenly begin sentences with some dramatic start." She lowered her voice. "like ... IN A WORLD, FAR, FAR AWAY ... ~ Anne Eliot

If there were ever two sentences that you will not respond well to, 'Don't move. There's a snake behind your foot,' is it. ~ Warren Hutcherson

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - talk them or write them down. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

The past gives you no justice. Sentences are passed. But that doesn't mean you get justice. You can stand there forever and rail and say, 'Someone has to pay. I want what was taken from me.' But you're just going to get silence coming back at you. The past doesn't pay. We pay. And we're all free to decide when we've had enough. ~ Michael Hainey

I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder - alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware - is inadequate to the task. ~ Barack Obama

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

That's all books are. Escapism borne of wonderfully crafted words that describe far off lands. Sentences that ask and answer within seconds. Paragraphs that slay dragons and ride horses into the midnight sky. Chapters that describe the sensation of pounding hearts and consuming desire, each feeling chronicling the incredible sensation of falling in love. ~ Emma Hart

The day I became a writer
it wasn't the day a whore paid me in sex
in exchange for one of my books
which happened often and more and more
as time went on
it wasn't the first time someone
actually paid for one of my books
which happens less and less
as time goes on
It was the day I realized
that everything is created by man
God, Satan, Judas, phobias, excrement, even death
even women
everything is created by man
So I said to myself
shit, let me make something
let me tape together some words
and sentences
and prose
and predicates
and the residual shit that sticks to my ass after I wipe
and compose a new kind of thing
But then I realized that others had discovered this
for themselves as well
And suddenly the world became a jungle
Where everyone eats each other alive
And shits out the same shit ~ Dave Matthes

Lucy said, her nose pressed to the window. "Misunderstanding. No big deal."
Solange quirked a half smile. "You might try complete sentences, Lucy."
"Can't. Busy."
I was curious despite myself. "What are you doing?"
"Drooling," Solange explained fondly.
"I totally am," Lucy admitted, unrepentant. "Just look at them."
Lucy moved over to give me space. She was watching five of the seven Drake boys repairing the outside wall of the farmhouse, under our window. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

There are only two kinds of math books: Those you cannot read beyond the first sentence, and those you cannot read beyond the first page. ~ Chen-Ning Yang

Then my outrage wandered away: never do junk if you need to finish thoughts, sentences, or simple tasks. ~ Lynn Crosbie

When I started graduate school we did this publishing class where we learned about submitting and read interviews with editors from different magazines. A lot of them said they got so many submissions that unless the first page stuck out or the first paragraph or even the first sentence they'll probably send it back. So part of my idea was that if I have a really good first sentence maybe they'll read on a bit further. At least half, maybe more of the stories in Knockemstiff started with the first sentence; I got it down then went from there. ~ Donald Ray Pollock

Volunteer sentences are the relics of your education And the desire to emulate the grown-up, workaday prose that surrounds you, Which is made overwhelmingly of sentences that are banal and structurally thoughtless. A volunteer sentence is almost always a perfunctory sentence. That can change. But only after years of questioning the shapes of sentences you read, And every sentence you write. Don't let the word "years" alarm you. Think of it as months and months and months and months. You may think a volunteer sentence is an inspired one Simply because it volunteers. This is one reason to abandon the idea of inspiration. All the idea of inspiration will do Is stop you from revising a volunteer sentence. Only revision will tell you whether a sentence that offers itself is worth keeping. ~ Verlyn Klinkenborg

Learning grammar can be viewed as a game that a little boy plays with his father. Daddy talks, the boy listens - perhaps disobeys - and Daddy talks some more. All the while the boy is trying to figure out the grammar that can generate the sentences in Daddy's speech. The boy might occasionally talk back, but there is no guarantee that Daddy will pay any attention. Not that he is a bad father: recall from Chapter 5 that in some cultures, adults do not interact with children until they are socially and linguistically adept. To fully understand the game of language learning, then, Daddy can be assumed only as a rather passive participant. The goal of the game is to learn Daddy's grammar within some finite amount of time: nobody learns forever. ~ Charles Yang

I dream
for an absentee and oft maligned
device - the accident-maker,
the soul-taker, my camera;
its factory guaranteed
third eye, without which I am duly dim
and memory denied. No pictures
for my contrived Arbus to declare,
excepting some stitch of Sexton
manages these sentences
of despair. ~ Kristen Henderson

How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration) ~ John Steinbeck

The first time I write my full name
Jacqueline Amanda Woodson
without anybody' help
on a clean white page in my composition notebook,
I know
If I wanted to
I could write anything
Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning, becoming
thoughts outside my head
becoming sentences
written by
Jacqueline Amanda Woodson ~ Jacqueline Woodson

School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know. ~ John Taylor Gatto

It was the single forgiving phrase in the syntax of weaponry I had strapped about me. The rest were unequivocal sentences of death. ~ Richard K. Morgan

Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind. ~ Lauren Oliver

If God did not reveal himself with word-by-word
precision, then He has placed the revelation of
truth into the incompetent hands of fallen man.
That would prove hopelessly imbecilic. He who
revealed Himself with exactness in "natural" creation
chose the precise words, sentences and paragraphs to compile one Book in which we have His perfect Word. ~ Ron Susek

I knew I wasn't thinking right, that I was little more than a jumble of emotions and half sentences. I thought in colors, and saw in bursts of silence. ~ C.D. Reiss

If you're going to read this, don't bother. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The longer and the deeper the thought, the shorter the sentence of wisdom will be. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

If you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one. ~ Arthur Brisbane

[My] interest as a writer is not in reflecting actual human speech, which, of course, does not occur in sentences and is totally undiagrammable ... My interest is in trying to reflect the reality of experience-how we feel when we talk to each other, how we feel when we're engaging with questions that interest us. ~ John Green

Alarmed, I realized what my visceral reaction implied: jealousy. Over a guy I barely knew, with whom I'd exchanged more saliva than sentences. ~ Tammara Webber

I've
enjoyed our conversation, knight. It's been nice talking to someone
who can - "
"Create full and complete sentences?"
That grin returned and, for a moment, his heart actually stopped
beating. "No, it was nice to finally meet someone whose arrogance is
only rivaled by the arrogance of the gods. ~ G.A. Aiken

After those four years, he returned to the Midwest. He'd turned twenty-five, the Age of Unfolding, and it was time to write a novel, the way his hero had. He moved to a cheap apartment in Chicago and set to work, but even as the pages accumulated, despair set in. It was easy enough to write a sentence, but if you were going to create a work of art, the way Melville had, each sentence needed to fit perfectly with the one that preceded it, and the unwritten one that would follow. And each of those sentences needed to square with the ones on either side, so that three became five and five became seven, seven became nine, and whichever sentence he was writing became the slender fulcrum on which the whole precarious edifice depended. That sentence could contain anything, anything, and so it promised the kind of absolute freedom that, to Affenlight's mind, belonged to the artist and the artist alone. And yet that sentence was also beholden to the book's very first one, and its last unwritten one, and ever sentence in between. Every phrase, every word, exhausted him. ~ Chad Harbach

I write books and either people read them or they don't read them. The rise of Facebook or e-books doesn't change the difficulty level of writing sentences and thinking up new ideas. ~ Colson Whitehead

There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They're too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer's less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they're guardians of language. They're no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind. ~ Stephen Fry

The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one's life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives should be without the illumination of the lives of others? ~ James Salter

No sentence can end with because because, because is a conjunction ~ C. N. Annadurai

There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

[for indicted foreigners] simple expulsion is not enough ( ... ) they must be arrested immediately, tried using a fast-track procedure, and then expelled to serve their sentences in the countries they came from, ( ... ) it isn't right that foreign criminals are being housed in our [Italian] jails. ~ Franco Frattini

You should write, write, write every day, and learn to edit and pare it right back so you're proud of every sentence, and each one is either being useful or beautiful, but hopefully both. ~ Caitlin Moran

Words themselves become beings, sentences becomenatural vegetation to be guided by the gardener's hands. ~ Eric Sevareid

A death sentence will be issued, a death sentence will be implemented. A life sentence will be issued, a life sentence will be implemented. ~ Mohammed Morsi

Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I've invited them for dinner?" or "they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply. ~ Terry Pratchett

All truth has to be expressed in sentences ... the type of sentence in nature is a flash of lightning. ~ Ernest Fenollosa

But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them. ~ Virginia Woolf

Writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are ... the process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions. ~ Barack Obama

It may be added, that the same change took place in dogmatic teaching, as in the exposition of Scripture. This indeed was still more to be expected, for the issue of controversies and the decrees of Councils had given to the doctrinal statements of the Fathers an authority, or rather prerogative, which was never claimed for their commentaries. Accordingly, S. John Damascene's work on the Orthodox Faith in the viiith century is scarcely more than a careful selection and combination of sentences and phrases from the great theologians who preceded him, principally S. Gregory Nazianzen. A comment or scholia by the same author upon S. Paul's Epistles have come down to us, which are mainly taken from S. Chrysostom, but with some use of other expositors. ~ Thomas Aquinas

I write longer sentences than most of the others, maybe because I probably like Henry James more than they do. ~ Peter Straub

In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we need to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves. ~ Douglas Coupland