That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a… — Guillermo Cabrera Infante Copy Share Image
The category of first sentence makes sense only if it is looking forward to the development of thematic concerns it perhaps only… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
Because prison sentences in America tend to be long, de-incarceration lags falling crime rates by a fair amount, but eventually it does… — Kevin Drum Copy Share Image
If you're still wondering about details - how am I going to get these two to meet, or whatever - when you're… — John Irving Copy Share Image
People often say that when couples are married for a long time, they start to look alike. I don't believe that. But… — David Levithan Copy Share Image
In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
Hope. It's like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It's a fresh rain, a whispered promise,… — Tahereh Mafi Copy Share Image
Detachment produces a peculiar state of mind. Maybe that's the worst sentence of all, to be deprived of feeling what a human… — James Dickey Copy Share Image
Sophistry, like poison, is at once detected and nauseated, when presented to us in a concentrated form; but a fallacy which, when… — Richard Whately Copy Share Image
People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
...mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic language enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
The constructive intellect [genius] produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude-but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
To wait - only to wait - without even the final merciful deprivation of hope.Sometimes I think that some secret court must… — Anna Kavan Copy Share Image
There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists,… — Philip K. Dick Copy Share Image
"I don't like it" or "I like it". This sentence must go away from your tongue. Likes and dislikes are only for… — Nirmala Srivastava Copy Share Image
It's also obsessiveness. I'll spend a lot of time working on a single sentence, debating over a dash or a colon, etc.… — Mary J. Miller Copy Share Image
Jesus made everything so simple and we have made it so complicated. He spoke to the people in short sentences and everyday… — Billy Graham Copy Share Image
Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more… — Amy Hempel Copy Share Image
We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any… — Herbert Spencer Copy Share Image
Herman Melville is not comforting. Emily Dickinson isn’t either. Maybe their work is too hungry for comfort, or just too vivid for… — Susan Howe Copy Share Image
I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next… — Karen Thompson Walker Copy Share Image
I go through the text making sure I haven't used any big words. If I find any fancy adjectives have crept in,… — Martin Millar Copy Share Image
I paint; I'm a woman but I don't paint china. The first time I got a canvas I felt free. Art is… — Alice Neel Copy Share Image
When I was writing the first few books, what I would do is write a bunch of sentences and then go back… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Milton on speed. I am going to need about a decade to think about that. That delay in syntax, the putting off… — Matthew Zapruder Copy Share Image
Lots of kids, including my son, have trouble making the leap from reading words or a few sentences in picture books to… — Rhea Perlman Copy Share Image
To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail;… — John Ruskin Copy Share Image
Four. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't… — Lyndon B. Johnson Copy Share Image
A scrupulous writer in every sentence that he writes will ask himself. . . What am I trying to say? What words… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
It is a curious fact, but a fact it is, that your witty people are the most hard-hearted in the world. The… — Letitia Elizabeth Landon Copy Share Image
When I woke the next morning in my room at White's Motel, I showered and stood naked in front of the mirror,… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
One thing my mother always instilled in me is to always know my worth. Don't settle for less. She used to say… — Iman Abdulmajid Copy Share Image
In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before… — Douglas Coupland Copy Share Image
I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one… — Jack Kerouac Copy Share Image
Good night, Seth." "So you're running again, then?" One of his boots thudded on the floor. "I'm not running." The other boot… — Melissa Marr Copy Share Image
I sat down and tried to write a story. "Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out… — Stephen Chbosky Copy Share Image
And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the… — John Irving Copy Share Image
Wanting to know absolutely what a story is about, and to be able to say it in a few sentences, is dangerous:… — Andre Dubus Copy Share Image