One Sentence Quotes

• The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

  Karl Marx

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Political

  137 Copy quote

• If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis.

  Tyler Cowen

  Simple, Ties, Innovation

  15 Copy quote

• A great man is one sentence.

  Clare Boothe Luce

  Men, Great Men, Sentences

  5 Copy quote

• The practice of love can be expressed in one sentence: 'Do not harm others.'

  Dalai Lama

  Practice, Harm, Sentences

  8 Copy quote

• Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Stories, Done

  Kurt Vonnegut (1998). “Timequake”, p.109, Penguin

  54 Copy quote

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• Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Helping, Born

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.3038, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

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• There would be a trial and there would be a judge. The only problem was, there could only be one sentence.

  Christopher Pike

  Judging, Would Be, Trials

  Christopher Pike (2009). “Thirst No. 1: The Last Vampire, Black Blood, Red Dice”

  4 Copy quote

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• No, what I felt was the torment of waiting, stuck between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next which might or might not bring a hail storm, plane crash, poetic justice, or a miraculous reversal.

  Nicole Krauss

  Justice, Waiting, Storm

  6 Copy quote

• "She was right about something else too," Dimitri said after a long pause. My back was to him, but there was a strange quality to his voice that made me turn around. "What's that?" I asked. "That I do still love you." With that one sentence, everything in the universe changed.

  Richelle Mead

  Love You, Voice, Long

  "Last Sacrifice". Book by Richelle Mead, December 7, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

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• You get older and you learn there is one sentence just four worlds long and if you can say it to yourself it offers more comfort than almost any other. It goes like this… Ready ” “Ready.” “At least I tried.

  Ann Brashares

  Long, Comfort, World

  4 Copy quote

• It's impossible to be the Mockingjay. Impossible to complete even this one sentence. Because now I know that everything I say will be directly taken out on Peeta. Result in his torture. But not his death, no nothing so merciful as that. Snow will ensure that his life is much worse than death.

  Suzanne Collins

  Taken, Snow, Impossible

  Suzanne Collins (2010). “Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3)”, p.162, Scholastic Inc.

  16 Copy quote

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• If I can write one sentence, simple and true every day, I'll be satisfied.

  Paula McLain

  Writing, Simple, Satisfied

  Paula McLain (2012). “The Paris Wife (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel”, p.100, Ballantine Books

  16 Copy quote

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• He gave a small nod, and I smiled back, and that was it. He understood that I'd understood that he'd understood. It took us one sentence, two looks, and a nod - with another woman it would have been at least five minutes of out-loud talking. Lucky for me I spoke fluent guy.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Talking, Two, Guy

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2012). “Kiss the Dead: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.41, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

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• to read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another, from one action to another, from one level of a text to another. The text unveils itself before us, but never allows itself to be possessed; and instead of trying to possess it we should take pleasure in its teasing

  David Lodge

  Curiosity, Desire, Trying

  David Lodge (2012). “Small World”, p.27, Random House

  46 Copy quote

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• When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

  John McPhee

  Ocean, Moving, Writing

  "Basin and Range". Book by John McPhee, 1981; reprinted in his book "Annals of the Former World", 1998.

  28 Copy quote

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• Making films can be absolutely fantastic, but it can also be incredibly dull. You spend the whole day sitting by yourself in your trailer and then you get called to deliver one sentence - then you're told to come back and do it again at 5:30 the following morning.

  Kristin Scott Thomas

  Morning, Sitting, Dull

  4 Copy quote

• Every country has its cocktail-party question. A simple one-sentence query, the answer to which unlocks a motherlode of information about the person you just met.... In Switzerland it is, Where are you from? That is all you need to know about someone.

  Eric Weiner

  Country, Party, Simple

  4 Copy quote

• I was told to challenge every spiritual teacher, every world leader to utter the one sentence that no religion, no political party, and no nation on the face of the earth will dare utter: 'Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Spiritual, Teacher, Party

  9 Copy quote

• If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.

  Salman Rushdie

  Religion, Sound, Sentences

  4 Copy quote

• If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

  John McPhee

  Motivational, Writing, Marine

  John McPhee (2000). “Annals of the Former World”, p.127, Macmillan

  57 Copy quote

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• I remember my wife in white.' It just made people weep to hear it...Everybody just thought it was the saddest sentence that was ever written. And it didn't matter if I never wrote another word. This one sentence had put an end to the need for any future sentences. I had said it all.

  Carolyn Parkhurst

  White, People, Wife

  4 Copy quote

• It's Nathaniel Hawthorne Month in English. Poor Nathaniel. Does he know what they've done to him? We're reading The Scarlet Letter one sentence at a time, tearing it up and chewing on its bones. It's all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break -- these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn't he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward?

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Reading, Class, Symbolism

  4 Copy quote

• That moment - to this ... may be years in the way they measure, but it's only one sentence back in my mind - there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails. I pass the hotel at 8 and at 5; there are cats in the alleys and bottles and bums, and I look up at the window and think, I no longer know where you are, and I walk on and wonder where the living goes when it stops.

  Charles Bukowski

  Cat, Thinking, Years

  Charles Bukowski (2016). “On Love”, p.9, Canongate Books

  19 Copy quote

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• If you sincerely believed in God, how could you form one thought, speak one sentence, without mentioning Him?

  Neal Stephenson

  Speak, Form, Sincerely

  Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.178, Atlantic Books Ltd

  4 Copy quote

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• The best movies have one sentence that they're exploring, a thesis, something that people can argue about over dinner afterward.

  Helen Hunt

  People, Dinner, Arguing

  4 Copy quote