Sentences Quotes - Page 18

• To be successful in writing, use short sentences.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Successful, Use

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• Pleasantries are low entropy, biased so far that they stop being an earnest inquiry and become ritual. Ritual has its virtues, of course, and I don't quibble with them in the slightest. But if we really want to start fathoming someone, we need to get them speaking in sentences we can't finish.

  Brian Christian

  Needs, Inquiry, Want

  "The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive". Book by Brian Christian, March 1, 2011.

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• We are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people who are smoking marijuana.

  Bernie Sanders

  Marijuana, Jail, People

  CNN Democratic Debate, cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com. October 13, 2015.

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• I subject my sentences and the words to a kind of Grand Inquisition.

  Lynne Tillman

  Kind, Subjects, Inquisition

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I'm trying always to leave out what I think is extraneous. And to find what I think is the most wonderful language to make a beautiful sentence.

  Lynne Tillman

  Beautiful, Thinking, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• You could say this word is better to use than that word, this sentence is good and that sentence isn't. But you don't determine the value of your work for other people.

  Lynne Tillman

  People, Use, Determine

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• When I'm choosing things, there's a level of intelligence I want to peel off, whether it's written in terribly simple sentences, whether it's from the point of view of a dog, or a 15-year-old boy.

  Lynne Tillman

  Dog, Boys, Simple

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I am a big Brian Eno fan - the first few Brian Eno records are just absolute gibberish and he came up with a lot of lyrics by writing down loads and loads of random sentences and streams, and I find meaning in that music, even though he'd probably say it's absolute gibberish.

  Jay Watson

  Writing, Fans, Records

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

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• Take a report. It's dry, the sentences are clunky and unfelicitous, they're just conveying information. But it seems to me that if you're fully engaged in a great piece of literature, once you enter the rhythms of the language, which is a kind of music, meanings are being conveyed that you're not fully aware of. They enter into your subconscious.

  Paul Auster

  Pieces, Literature, Dry

  Interview with Nathalie Cochoy and Sophie Vallas, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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• I write different kinds of sentences, depending on what the book is, and what the project is. I see my work evolving. I'm writing long sentences now, something I didn't use to do. I had some kind of breakthrough, five or six years ago, in Invisible, and in Sunset Park after that. I discovered a new way to write sentences. And I find it exhilarating.

  Paul Auster

  Book, Writing, Sunset

  Interview with Nathalie Cochoy and Sophie Vallas, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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• I feel I'm discovering something new, a different rhythm, and I guess these rhythms have a lot to do with walking, too, but it's a longer trajectory now. I'm traveling greater distances with each sentence. But I don't write about walking that much anymore.

  Paul Auster

  Distance, Writing, Different

  Interview with Nathalie Cochoy and Sophie Vallas, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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• The mental state I'm in is completely different, but the act of trying to write is the same. I mean, in all instances you try to write good sentences. But in a novel you're free to do whatever you want, and in the autobiographical works you can't make things up.

  Paul Auster

  Writing, Mean, Trying

  Interview with Nathalie Cochoy and Sophie Vallas, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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• I've written books that have taken me fifteen years, from first sentence to last, and some that only take three or four months.

  Paul Auster

  Book, Taken, Years

  "A Connoisseur of Clouds, a Meteorologist of Whims: The Rumpus Interview with Paul Auster". Interview with Juliet Linderman, therumpus.net. November 16, 2009.

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• When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.

  Paul Auster

  Book, Writing, Character

  "A Connoisseur Of Clouds, A Meteorologist Of Whims". Interview with Juliet Linderman, therumpus.net. November 16, 2009.

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• The first American word that I learned was cheeseburger. And the first sentence I learned was, "I'm sorry but we don't serve breakfast after 12 o'clock."

  Callan McAuliffe

  Sorry, Breakfast, Firsts

  Source: www.seventeen.com

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• Once I start writing, I am a huge reviser. To me writing is revising. I probably turn over every sentence that I write, to see if I have the rhythm right. That's why my first drafts take a really long time.

  Matt de la Pena

  Writing, Long, Firsts

  Source: therumpus.net

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• What happens when you speak colloquial Hebrew is you switch between registers all the time. So in a typical sentence, three words are biblical, one word is Russian, and one word is Yiddish. This kind of connection between very high language and very low language is very natural, people use it all the time.

  Etgar Keret

  Biblical, People, Typical

  "Etgar Keret: We Can Try to Be Human". Interview with Meakin Armstrong, www.guernicamag.com. August 17, 2015.

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• I'm a line-maker. I think that's what makes poets different from prose-writers. That's the main way. We think, not just in sentences the way prose writers do but also in lines. So we're doing these two things at the same time.

  Billy Collins

  Thinking, Two, Different

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• The resistance to my work, and to my way of writing, has been there from the beginning. The first things I wrote were these short short stories collected in At the Bottom of the River, and at least three of them are one sentence long. They were printed in The New Yorker, over the objections of many of the editors in the fiction department.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Editors, Rivers

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

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• 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

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Writing a song is almost like cheating-writing because you don't have to finish your sentences, you don't have to use any punctuation, no one's going to edit your work. It's so wide open. People just grunt and that's a song. You can kind of do anything.

  Mirah

  Cheating, Song, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm a terrible sentence finisher. I think that's why I'm a songwriter. When you write a song, there are no rules, and I think that I talk as if there are no rules. But then I run this great risk of no one understanding me at all.

  Mirah

  Running, Song, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• 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

  School, Editors, Class

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I had this bad habit of not writing out a first draft and going back. For me it was the first sentence, then the second sentence, and I might be several weeks on the first page instead of writing a draft and trying to figure it out from there.

  Donald Ray Pollock

  Writing, Trying, Might

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I try to use short sentences, short paragraphs and short chapters to keep the reader's interest.

  Nelson DeMille

  Trying, Use, Chapters

  Talk City Network Interview, www.bookbrowse.com. 2000.

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