Best Lynne Truss Quotes
- Oh, the illusion of choice in the modern world - don't get me started. But don't you agree that the Internet has softened our brains… Agree
- The idea of withholding a massive secret is obviously quite exciting to some people. It is also the basis of much classic drama, of course,… Bases
- Writers and painters alike are in the business of consulting their own imaginations, and stimulating the imaginations of others. Together, and separately, they celebrate the… Absolute
- Texting is a fundamentally sneaky form of communication, which we should despise, but it is such a boon we don't care. We are all sneaks… All
- Texting is a supremely secretive medium of communication - it's like passing a note - and this means we should be very careful what we… Careful
- Thurber was asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room'?" And his… Answer
- What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the… Alarmist
- The reason it's worth standing up for punctuation is not that it's an arbitrary system of notation known only to an over-sensitive elite who have… Arbitrary
- Manners are about imagination, ultimately. They are about imagining being the other person. Imagination
- Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. Both
- The rule is: don’t use commas like a stupid person. I mean it. Commas
- Sticklers never read a book without a pencil at hand, to correct the typographical errors. In short, we are unattractive know-all obsessives who get things… All
- Brackets come in various shapes, types and names: 1 round brackets (which we call brackets, and the Americans call parentheses) 2 square brackets [which we… Americans
- I recently heard of someone studying the ellipsis (or three dots) for a PhD. And, I have to say, I was horrified. The ellipsis is… Black
- A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. "Why?" asks… Air
- When you by nature subscribe to the view that everyone except yourself is a berk or a wanker, it is hard to bond with anybody… Any
- No one else understands us 7th sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes, we are often aggressively instructed to… Aggressively
- The rule is: the word 'it's' (with apostrophe) stands for 'it is' or 'it has'. If the word does not stand for 'it is' or… All
- Many aspects of our screen-bound lives are bad for our social skills simply because we get accustomed to controlling the information that comes in, managing… Accustomed
- ...when a phone call competes for attention with a real-world conversation, it wins. Everyone knows the distinctive high-and-dry feeling of being abandoned for a phone… Abandoned
- Offence is so easily given. And where the 'minority' issue is involved, the rules seem to shift about: most of the time a person who… Black
- The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have… Absolutes
- We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and elusive, poetic and modulated;… Absolute
- For any true stickler, you see, the sight of the plural word “Book’s” with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process… Accelerated
- Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas? Apostrophe