Lynne Truss Quotes - Page 2

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• Well, start waving and yelling, because it is the so-called Oxford comma and it is a lot more dangerous than its exclusive, ivory-tower moniker might suggest. There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken. Oh, the Oxford comma. Here, in case you don't know what it is yet, is the perennial example, as espoused by Harold Ross: "The flag is red, white, and blue." So what do you think of it? Are you for or against it? Do you hover in between?

  Lynne Truss

  Taken, Thinking, Ivory

  5 Copy quote

• The way people behave towards each other is a measure of their value as human beings.

  Lynne Truss

  People, Way, Behave

  6 Copy quote

• If we looked inside ourselves and remembered how insignificant we are, just for a couple of minutes a day, respect for other people would be an automatic result.

  Lynne Truss

  Couple, People, Would Be

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• 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 similar to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated. First there is shock. Within seconds, shock gives way to disbelief, disbelief to pain, and pain to anger. Finally (and this is where the analogy breaks down), anger gives way to a righteous urge to perpetrate an act of criminal damage with the aid of a permanent marker.

  Lynne Truss

  Pain, Book, Emotional

  "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, www.newyorker.com. 2003.

  4 Copy quote

• ...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 call, and of having to compensate - with quite elaborate behaviours = for the sudden half-disappearance of the person we were just speaking to. 'Go ahead!' we say. 'Don't mind us! Oh look, here's a magazine I can read!' When the call is over, other rituals come into play, to minimise the disruption caused and to restore good feeling.

  Lynne Truss

  Real, Winning, Phones

  4 Copy quote

• As someone who sends texts messages more or less non-stop, I enjoy one particular aspect of texting more than anything else: that it is possible to sit in a crowded railway carriage laboriously spelling out quite long words in full, and using an enormous amount of punctuation, without anyone being aware of how outrageously subversive I am being.

  Lynne Truss

  Long, Messages, Texting

  "The joy of text" by Will Self, Lynne Truss, www.theguardian.com. July 4, 2008.

  7 Copy quote

• What one discovers in life, I find, is that one's personality defects don't come and go.

  Lynne Truss

  Personality, Comes And Goes, Defects

  7 Copy quote

• I am not against marriage. I lived with someone for 11 years. But we weren't in love, and I thought that was quite important.

  Lynne Truss

  Years, Important

  7 Copy quote

• In my worst moments, I think the biggest effect of 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' was to kill the happiness of people who had previously skipped through life, unaware of all the atrocities lurking in the world around them.

  Lynne Truss

  Thinking, Worst Moments, People

  4 Copy quote

• All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.

  Lynne Truss

  Book, People, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• 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 end of the world. Are they being alarmist?

  Lynne Truss

  Use, World, Ends

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• Don't pessimism and caution naturally go hand in hand?

  Lynne Truss

  Hands, Pessimism, Caution

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• Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.

  Lynne Truss

  Stories, Helping, Punctuation

  5 Copy quote

• You should read Wodehouse when you're well and when you're poorly;when you're travelling, and when you're not;when you're feeling clever, and when you're feeling utterly dim. Wodehouse always lifts your spirits,no matter how high they happen to be already.

  Lynne Truss

  Clever, Feelings, Matter

  4 Copy quote

• Nice clothes fall apart. Nice clocks don't work. Bits fall off the nice cooker. It is hard to accept that pricing is unrelated to quality, but it's plainly true. Nowadays, we pay the price that satisfies our particular personality type; and then we live with the painful consequences.

  Lynne Truss

  Nice, Fall, Pay The Price

  4 Copy quote

• 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 doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one's peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad.

  Lynne Truss

  Mean, People, Political

  "Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door". Book by Lynne Truss, 2005.

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• 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 the black hole of the punctuation universe, surely, into which no right-minded person would willingly be sucked, for three years, with no guarantee of a job at the end.

  Lynne Truss

  Jobs, Years, Black

  9 Copy quote

• Old radio comedy makes me laugh, as well as 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue' and comedians like Paul Merton.

  Lynne Truss

  Sorry, Laughing, Comedian

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• Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

  Lynne Truss

  Black And White, Mammals, Pandas

  114 Copy quote

• I do needlepoint from kits. I give them as gifts to people in the form of cushion covers and they are often speechless with horror.

  Lynne Truss

  People, Giving, Horror

  Interview with Rosanna Greenstreet, www.theguardian.com. August 27, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• I used to help my dad with a stall selling eggs when I was about 12. People were so hard up they would ask for one egg. But mostly no one came by at all. It was very demoralising.

  Lynne Truss

  Dad, Eggs, People

  Interview with Rosanna Greenstreet, www.theguardian.com. August 27, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• 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 and made us forget that 'choice' used to mean something different from selecting options from menus?

  Lynne Truss

  Mean, Choices, Brain

  4 Copy quote

• 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, from Sophocles onwards.

  Lynne Truss

  Drama, Ideas, People

  4 Copy quote

• 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 mystery of otherness.

  Lynne Truss

  Imagination, Together, Mystery

  "Character studies" by Lynne Truss, www.theguardian.com. June 9, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• I mean, full stops are quite important, aren't they? Yet by contrast to the versatile apostrophe, they are stolid little chaps, to say the least. In fact one might dare to say that while the full stop is the lumpen male of the punctuation world (do one job at a time; do it well; forget about it instantly), the apostrophe is the frantically multi-tasking female, dotting hither and yon, and succumbing to burn-out from all the thankless effort.

  Lynne Truss

  Jobs, Mean, Effort

  4 Copy quote

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