Adverbs Quotes - Page 2

• The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

  Philip Roth

  Work, Writing, Sisterhood

  1979 In the NewYorkTimes Book Review,15 Jul.

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• Words are like that, they deceive, they pile up, it seems they do not know where to go, and, suddenly, because of two or three or four that suddenly come out, simple in themselves, a personal pronoun, an adverb, an adjective, we have the excitement of seeing them coming irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting the composure of our feelings, sometimes the nerves that can not bear it any longer, they put up with a great deal, they put up with everything, it was as if they were wearing armor, we might say.

  Jose Saramago

  Eye, Simple, Two

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• I think the adverb is a much-maligned part of speech. Its always accused of being oppressive, even tyrannical, when in fact its so supple and sly.

  Eleanor Catton

  Thinking, Speech, Facts

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• You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analagous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.

  Larry McMurtry

  Country, Philosophy, Simple

  Larry McMurtry (2010). “Some Can Whistle”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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• The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Dog, Writing, Sisterhood

  Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.37, Hamilton Books

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• The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects - nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs - ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I'm most happy to be a writer.

  Maya Angelou

  People, Together, Nouns

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• I get imaginative with a mouth full of adjectives,
  A brain full of adverbs, and a box full of laxatives,
  Shittin' on rappers, causin' hospital accidents.

  Eminem

  Rap, Hip Hop, Brain

  Song: Still Don't Give a Fuck

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• It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes, it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.

  Daniel Handler

  People, Bird, Miracle

  "Adverbs". Book by Daniel Handler, June 5, 2006.

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• God loveth adverbs; and cares not how good, but how well.

  Joseph Hall

  Care, God Love, Wells

  Joseph Hall, Josiah Pratt (1808). “The Works: Now First Collected : with Some Account of His Life and Sufferings. Devotional works”, p.85

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• Adverbs and cops always come in pairs.

  Gary Reilly

  Pairs, Cop

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• Don Basilio was a forbidding-looking man with a bushy mustache who did not suffer fools and who subscribed to the theory that the liberal use of adverbs and adjectives was the mark of a pervert or someone with a vitamin deficiency.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Men, Mustache, Suffering

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• All the words in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection.

  Joseph Devlin

  Class, Adjectives, Verbs

  Joseph Devlin (2014). “How to Speak and Write Correctly (illustrated): Fully Formatted Version”, p.5, Full Moon Publications

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• I have no policy, for or against: only a personal style. Which is to say, I use them when I think it's appropriate to; for example, an internal monologue by a locquacious and verbose narrator is more likely to be larded with adverbs than an exchange of instant messages between cops at a crime scene.

  Charles Stross

  Thinking, Style, Narrators

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• Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

  Joseph Heller

  Hands, One Day, Adjectives

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

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• Younger women tend to be busier, wearing more layers and more make-up. I don't know if it's because older women are more confident, or just that we don't care any more. But that pared-down approach is the same with the sentences I write; I take out adjectives and adverbs and keep the description to a minimum.

  Tracy Chevalier

  Writing, Adjectives And Adverbs, Care

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• Saw you walking barefoot taking a long look at the new moon's eyelid later spread sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair asleep but not oblivious of the unslept unsleeping elsewhere Tonight I think no poetry will serve Syntax of rendition: verb pilots the plane adverb modifies action verb force-feeds noun submerges the subject noun is choking verb disgraced goes on doing now diagram the sentence

  Adrienne Rich

  Sleep, Dark, Thinking

  Adrienne Rich (2011). “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010: Poems 2007–2010”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I am such a person of words. I've spent so much of my life trying to get it right, say it right, say it eloquently, say it truthfully, say it honestly, that when I hear it said in ways that none of those adverbs would describe I find myself so repelled that it almost shuts my mind off.

  Frederick Buechner

  Mind, Trying, Way

  Interview with Bob Abernethy, www.pbs.org. April 5, 2006.

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• The question that arises as we use all these adjectives and adverbs to describe our physicians as we approach a Supreme Court nominee is where are we in America when we decide that it's legal to kill our unborn children?

  Tom Coburn

  Children, America, Adjectives And Adverbs

  U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Judge Samuel Alito's Nomination to the Supreme Court, www.washingtonpost.com. January 9, 2006.

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• Question the Chestnuts. Chestnuts: the new name for boobs? No. NO. Why would you even say that? Get your mind out of the gutter. No, by "chestnuts" I mean, "those old pieces of writing advice that you hear as common refrain." 'Write what you know.' 'Adverbs give Baby Jesus hemorrhoids.' 'If you write a prologue, an orphan loses his sight.' All the "old saws" need to be put on the chopping block.

  Chuck Wendig

  Baby, Jesus, Block

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• I think the best way to put it is that newspictures are the noun and the verb; our kind of photography is the adjective and adverb. The newspicture is a single frame; ours, a subject viewed in series. The newspicture is dramatic, all subject and action. Ours shows what's back of the action.

  Roy Stryker

  Photography, Thinking, Adjectives And Adverbs

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• No worries, Atticus. I will snarf surreptitiously. And I should get bacon, because my adverb was two syllables longer than yours, plus a bonus for alliteration." I grinned. "It's a deal. You're the best hound ever.

  Kevin Hearne

  Two, Worry, Bonus

  Kevin Hearne (2014). “The Iron Druid Chronicles 6-Book Bundle: Hounded, Hexed, Hammered, Tricked, Trapped, Hunted”, p.911, Del Rey

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• Adverbs is a book about love, and I thought that was pretty cheerful, but people who are reading it now are telling me that it's actually quite dark.

  Daniel Handler

  Book, Reading, Dark

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2005.

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• To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That's what Norman Mailer did. That's what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that's what I do - that's what I mean to do.

  Maya Angelou

  Wall, Mean, Together

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• I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page.

  Colum McCann

  Character, Rude, Sound

  "Colum McCann: a life in writing" by Hermione Hoby, www.theguardian.com. May 25, 2013.

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• Just remember that Dumbo didn't need the feather; the magic was in him.

  Stephen King

  Magic, Needs, Remember

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

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