Paragraph Quotes - Page 2

• Look at almost any passage, and you'll find that a paragraph has five or six metaphors in it. It's not that the speaker is trying to be poetic, it's just that that's the way language works.

  Steven Pinker

  Trying, Looks, Way

  6 Copy quote

• You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink.

  Carl Hiaasen

  Past, Intellectual, Energy

  "He's all the rage". Interview with Euan Ferguson, www.theguardian.com. March 17, 2002.

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• I count it a high honor to belong to a profession in which the good men write every paragraph, every sentence, every line, as lovingly as any Addison or Steele, and do so in full regard that by tomorrow it will have been burned, or used, if at all, to line a shelf.

  Alexander Woollcott

  Writing, Men, Good Man

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• Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

  Nicholson Baker

  Book, Reading, Reality

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• When I see a paragraph shrinking under my eyes like a strip of bacon in a skillet, I know I'm on the right track.

  Peter De Vries

  Eye, Track, Shrinking

  22 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

• One thing I'd do was put a great writer's book beside the typewriter and... type out a beautiful and moving paragraph... and see those sentences rising up... and... think, 'Someday maybe I can write like that....' It was like a dream of possibilities for my own self. And maybe I began to know that there was no other way for the sentence... to... arouse the same feeling. The someone writing whose words were rising from the typewriter became like a mentor for me.... You shouldn't do it more than a few times because you must get on with your own work.

  Gina Berriault

  Beautiful, Dream, Moving

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• There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter if not a paragraph or a name in the history of philosophy.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Exercise

  Jorge Luis Borges (1964). “Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings”, p.43, New Directions Publishing

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• Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator’s mother carries her child up the stairs and the reader follows, for days. But World War I passes in a paragraph. I needed 125 pages to get from Labor Day to Christmas vacation. In six more words, here’s spring.

  Richard Powers

  Mother, Children, Spring

  Richard Powers (2009). “Generosity: An Enhancement”, p.166, Macmillan

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• When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what youre doing is not any kind of public show, until youre ready for it.

  Irvine Welsh

  Writing, Ideas, People

  5 Copy quote

• The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a resonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: `The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.'

  Chinua Achebe

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Things Fall Apart ch. 1 (1958)

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• For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.

  William H. Gass

  Country, Sex, Eye

  15 Copy quote

• The first paragraph. The last paragraph. That's where the story is going and how it's going to end. Or else you'll go off in a hundred different directions.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Stories, Lasts, Firsts

  Hunter S. Thompson, Beef Torrey, Kevin Simonson (2008). “Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson”, p.155, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I'm very concerned with questions of language. This is what I think of when I think of myself as a writer: I'm someone who writes sentences and paragraphs. I think of the sentence - not only what it shares but, in a sense, what it looks like. I like to match words not only in a way that convey a meaning, possibly an indirect meaning, but even at times words that have a kind of visual correspondence.

  Don DeLillo

  Writing, Thinking, Language

  "Living in dangerous times". Interview with Kevin Nance, articles.chicagotribune.com. October 12, 2012.

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• I write, fighting for every sentence, fighting to hold the reader with every paragraph.

  Hector Tobar

  Writing, Fighting, Reader

  Source: www.slate.com

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• Our investments continue to be few in number and simple in concept: The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph. We like a business with enduring competitive advantages that is run by able and owner-oriented people. When these attributes exist, and when we can make purchases at sensible prices, it is hard to go wrong (a challenge we periodically manage to overcome).

  Warren Buffett

  Running, Simple, Ideas

  Letter To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., www.berkshirehathaway.com. March 7, 1995.

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• In certain books—some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother.

  Robert Henri

  Brother, Book, Way

  Robert Henri (1960). “The art spirit”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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• There is never finality in the display terminal's screen, but an irresponsible whimsicality, as words, sentences, and paragraphs are negated at the touch of a key. The significance of the past, as expressed in the manuscript by a deleted word or an inserted correction, is annulled in idle gusts of electronic massacre.

  Alexander Cockburn

  Past, Keys, Massacres

  61 Copy quote

• I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin

  Anne Tyler

  Character, Writing, Two

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• I pointed to an article with bold headlines reporting that the police had refused to allow the PAP to hold a rally at Empress Place, and then to the last paragraph where in small type it added the meeting would take place where we were now. I compared this with a prominent report about an SPA rally. This was flagrant bias.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Police, Lasts, Empresses

  Lee Kuan Yew (2015). “The Singapore Story (Student Edition): Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew”, p.154, Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd

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• Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.

  Barrett Wendell

  Writing, Revision, Sentences

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• Justin Halpern tosses lightning bolts of laughter out of his pocket like he is shooting dice in a back alley. In one sweep of a paragraph, he ranges from hysterical to disgusting to touching--and does it all seamlessly. Sh*t My Dad Says is a really, really funny book.

  Laurie Notaro

  Dad, Laughter, Book

  4 Copy quote

• I huff and puff and struggle with every sentence, paragraph and page - sometimes every word as well.

  Aidan Chambers

  Struggle, Puff, Pages

  52 Copy quote

• When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask.

  C. S. Forester

  Book, Reading, Space

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• I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies.

  Brendan Gill

  Butterfly, Eye, Clouds

  BRENDAN GILL (1975). “HER AT THE NEW YORKER”

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