Punctuation Metaphor Quotes

So the particular strengths of the colon are beginning to become clear. A colon is nearly always preceded by a complete sentence, and in its simplest usage it rather theatrically announces what is to come. Like a well-trained magician's assistant, it pauses slightly to give you time to get a bit worried, and then efficiently whisks away the cloth and reveals the trick complete. ~ Lynne Truss

One of the things I like about my job is that it draws on the entire person: not just your knowledge of grammar and punctuation and usage and foreign languages and literature but also your experience of travel, gardening, shipping, singing, plumbing, Catholicism, midwesternism, mozzarella, the A train, New Jersey. And in turn it feeds you more experience. ~ Mary Norris

Consider, if you will, the morning boner. What a metaphor of hope and renewal! How can anyone give way to despair when one's groin greets each day with such a gala spectacle of physical optimism? ~ C.D. Payne

Effective metaphor does more than shed light on the two things being compared. It actually brings to the mind's eye something that has never before been seen. It's not just the marriage ceremony linking two things; it's the child born from the union. ~ Rebecca McClanahan

The basic idea is that there is this group that, over the centuries, has learned to control reincarnation. John's character stumbles into that realization, and it's a lot closer to him than he would ever have wanted to know. It's a metaphor for when you get in a fight with your significant other and you go, "Who is this?," or you look in the mirror and go, "Why did I say that?" It's the intruder. When you threw a temper tantrum at two years old, it's them. ~ Glen Morgan

Art was there to scratch at people's brains, to help ideas find traction in metaphor that they could not when made explicit. ~ Rebecca Scherm

I know, I know," Moore said. "Mad beliefs like that, eh? Must be some metaphor, right? Must mean something else?" Shook his head. "What an awfully arrogant thing. What if faiths are exactly what they are? And mean exactly what they say?"
"Stop trying to make sense of it and just listen," Dane said.
"And what," Moore said, "if a large part of the reason they're so tenacious is that they're perfectly accurate? ~ China Mieville

My fans have always loved my metaphors. ~ R. Kelly

I write in complete silence using only two fingers so I can't type faster than I edit at the same time, saving me from having to go back. Although it does create a lot of capitalization issues. And punctuation problems. I didn't say it was a good routine. ~ Dan Alatorre

The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island isolated in the Pacific Ocean - once the island got into trouble, there was no way they could get free. There was no other people from whom they could get help. In the same way that we on Planet Earth, if we ruin our own [world], we won't be able to get help. ~ Jared Diamond

Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art. - TWYLA THARP ~ Daniel H. Pink

It is merely a metaphor to call competition competitive war, or simply, war. The function of battle is destruction; of competition, construction. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

In the minds of some people, writing is one thing, but thinking is quite another. If they define writing as spelling, the production of sentences with random meanings, and punctuation, then they might have a case. But who would accept such a definition? Writing is the production of meaning. Writing is thinking. ~ George Hillocks Jr.

Culture is like the visible and invisible levels of an iceberg -"the solid state of "water. ~ Pearl Zhu

In the ancient world, especially among nomadic people, life was lived on foot. They walked step by step along a "path" or "way" in search of food and water for their flocks and herds. As a result, walking became a metaphor for the journey of life. We are called "to live [our lives] before God in such a way that every single step is made with reference to [him] and every day experiences him close at hand."4 To each of us, God says as He did to Abraham centuries ago, "Walk before me" (Gen. 17:1). Walking, however, is never simply walking per se. It is always walking along a particular way. We can walk along "the way of the LORD" (Gen. 18:19) - "the way of the righteous" (Ps. 1:6; cf. Prov. 8:20; 2 Peter 2:21), "the path of life" (Ps. 16:11; Prov. 10:17), "the good way" (Jer. 6:16), and "the way of the truth" (2 Peter ~ Robert Saucy

Transmuting this sandy metaphor, if literature is my sandbox, then the real world is my hourglass - an hourglass that drains grain by grain. ~ Rabih Alameddine

Metaphor is a slippery eel, if it wasn't for its shock I'd stick to the easy catch of prose. ~ David Joseph Cribbin

. . . [T]o live in an inspired condition, to know truth, to be free, to love another, to consummate existence, to abide with death in clarity of consciousness - without which, racing and conniving to evade death, the spirit holds its breath and hopes to be immortal because it does not live - is no longer a rarefied project. Just as machinery has embodied ideas of good, so the technology of destruction has also acquired a metaphysical character. The practical questions have thus become the ultimate questions as well. Annihilation is no longer a metaphor. Good and Evil are real. The inspired condition is therefore no visionary matter. It is not reserved for gods, kings, poets, priests, shrines, but belongs to mankind and to all of existence. ~ Saul Bellow

And I too am not myself, hoping for refuge in a metaphor that will contain it all. ~ Helon Habila

For me, Modern Warfare 3 's plot makes its signature turn around the bend when Russia invades Europe. As in, all of it. Simultaneously.
Now, I've never invaded Europe, except for that one time, but I would think that's a project you might want to stagger out a bit if you haven't forged an alliance with any galactic empires lately. ~ Yahtzee Croshaw

Speech is the pen and the sword of humankind and it is the foundation of their kingdom. Wherever the flag of speech waves, the most powerful armies are. defeated and scattered. In the arenas in which speech shouts out, the sounds of cannon balls become like the buzzing of bees. from behind the battlements on which the banner of speech has been raised, the sound of its drums are heard. In the precincts where its march reverberates, kings shake in their boots. The Master of Speech smashed to pieces many insurmountable walls, in the face of which Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and many others despaired or retread; and the pen of Speech, imparting and compliance, was saluted and praised. ~ M. Fethullah Gulen

And I have faith that you'll make a wonderful head of the Council someday, Sophie.
Yeah, except for that whole sleeping with the enemy part, I thought. Wait, not that I would actually be sleeping with ... I mean, it's a metaphor. There would only be metaphorical sleeping. ~ Rachel Hawkins

Bad apple frame. Consider the saying "A bad apple spoils the barrel." The implication is that if you remove the bad apple or some small number of bad apples, the others will be fine. The rot is localized and will not spread. Rot here is a metaphor for immorality. In a case where there is immoral behavior, it points blame at one person or a few people - and not to any broader systemic immorality, an immoral policy, or an immoral culture. This ~ George Lakoff

Wilfred Funk writes in Word Origins and Their Romantic Stories that originally all words were poems, since our language is based, like poems, in metaphor. ~ Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge

I love metaphors. I've never been on this train ... If I'm standing on the middle of a track, I'm definitely going to get derailed. I have to make sure that I'm on the train and not in front of it. ~ Serena Williams

History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, we are literally criminals.

I attest to this: the world is not white; it never was white, cannot be white. White is a metaphor for power, and that is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank. ~ James Baldwin

If you wish to find a needle in a haystack, light a match. ~ Jared Alan Brock

I like to write about painting because I think visually. I see my writing as blocks of color before it forms itself. I think I also care about painting because I'm not musical. Painting to me is not a metaphor for writing, but something people do that can never be reduced to words. ~ A.S. Byatt

When I was developing the [Daredevil] idea, we were really doing something closer to what was in the comic book. By that, I mean in terms of civilians in the street knew that superpowers were an everyday matter of fact. When it finally ended up at Netflix, they really decided to land it in the Marvel Universe that exists in the cinematic universe. That changes the story entirely. It was no longer about the other, which is what that metaphor was. It's really more about the character herself, which I love. ~ Melissa Rosenberg

Punctuation is important, but the rules are changing. Spelling is important today in a way that it wasn't when Shakespeare was a boy. Grammar isn't set in stone. ~ Gyles Brandreth

He had yet to fall in love to the degree that he felt he was capable of falling, had never written villanelles or declaration veiled in careful metaphor, nor sold his blood plasma to buy champagne or jonquils, nor haunted a mailbox or a phone booth or a certain café, nor screamed his beloved's name in the streets at three in the morning, heedless of the neighbors. ~ Michael Chabon

Wherever there was a scrap of soil amongst the ravaged crags, emaciated trees struggled to cling on: a poignant metaphor for the way so many Nepalis eke out an existence, defiantly surviving on less than nothing. ~ Jane Wilson-Howarth

The nature of atheism merits clarification on two further points which involve less common ideas about theism. The first involves the idea of 'God' which is metaphorical - for example, a theist who believes in 'God' as a principle of conscience or morality. This 'God' exists in a person's mind and it is not something which atheists will dispute. Atheists agree that gods exist as ideas in people's minds; the disagreement lies over whether any gods actually exist independently of human beliefs. Those are the gods which atheists disbelieve in or deny.

The second type of theism involves gods that exist as physical objects: stones, trees, rivers, or even the universe itself. Believers treat these objects are their gods, but do atheists reject their existence? Of course not - but how do they then remain atheists? The point of disagreement here is whether the label 'god' communicates any information beyond the more common label of 'stone,' 'tree,' or 'universe.' If not, then as far as atheists are concerned, those objects don't merit the extra label 'god' and they remain atheists. ~ Austin Cline

What I'm concerned about now is creating a metaphor for what the figure really is. ~ Nathan Oliveira

Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut. ~ Neil Gaiman

Have you ever thought about the grid of Manhattan?' It's like ... a metaphor for life. You think you have the freedom to walk anywhere. But in fact ... you are strictly controlled. Up or down. Left or right. Nothing in between. No other options.' Life should be like an open space ... you should be able to walk in whatever direction you choose. ~ Sophie Kinsella

Ideas result from the collision of metaphors inside the head. ~ Ray Bradbury

In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a high point. He'll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can't figure out whether the hero's laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff - a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to do his job. And I'm not lazy, whatever else I am. I'll tell you everything. ~ Jim Thompson

While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else - yet we see it all the time. ~ Lynne Truss

It's a wonder you don't see the zebra being trotted out as a metaphor for racial harmony more often. ~ Dov Davidoff

People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch. ~ Jack Nicholson

People in Haiti eat dirt because it gives their starving bodies a false sense of satisfaction. But mud pies don't fill. They merely mask real hunger. [...] I saw the mud pies as a metaphor for the life of any Christian who has ever looked to something or someone other than God for fulfillment. ~ Jennifer Dukes Lee