Punctuation Quotes - Page 3

• I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

  Steve Martin

  Tired, Letters, Periods

  Twitter post from Oct 7, 2011

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• I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.

  Laura Linney

  Character, Writing, Cadence

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• Celebrity is absolutely preposterous. Entertainment seems to be inflating. It used to be the punctuation to your life, a film or a novel or a play, a way of celebrating a good week or month. Now it feels as if it's all punctuation.

  Hugh Laurie

  Play, Way, Months

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back.

  James Fenton

  Song, Purpose, May

  James Fenton (2003). “An Introduction to English Poetry”, p.10, Penguin UK

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• And if you want to know why great editors scare the pants off of writers everywhere, read 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss. The punctuation police are everywhere!

  Dorothea Benton Frank

  Editors, Police, Scare

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• I still put punctuation in my texts. If it's an 'I', I make sure it's a capital.

  Simon Cowell

  Stills, Ifs

  "Simon Cowell: Simon says". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. September 23, 2011.

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• My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?

  Billy Wilder

  Aunt, Pay, Punctuality

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• The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.

  Lynne Truss

  Vapour, Way, Reason

  "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, www.today.com. November 6, 2013.

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• It is the relentless onward march of the texters, the SMS (Short Message Service) vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago. They are destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped.

  John Humphrys

  Vocabulary, Years, Sms

  "I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language" by John Humphrys, www.dailymail.co.uk. September 24, 2007.

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• Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.

  Abbas Kiarostami

  People, Lazy, Cinema

  "Cannes 2012: Abbas Kiarostami: 'The world is my workshop'". Interview with Xan Brooks, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2012.

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• Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation Then, in your exuberance and bounding energy you say you're going to add to that. Then you add rhyme and meter. And your delight is in that power.

  Robert Frost

  Vocabulary, Discipline, Delight

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• Every time I write these words they become a taboo,
  Making sure my punctuation curve, every letter here's true,
  Living my life in the margin, and that metaphor was proof.

  Kendrick Lamar

  Rap, Writing, Curves

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• I will say that the thing that I use too much, and I need to stop, but the F-word is pretty great. When you say it, it's so viscerally strong. It also serves as a great punctuation point - it can really emphasize how dumb something is.

  Hasan Minhaj

  Strong, Dumb

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.

  Isaac Marion

  Exclamation Marks, Punctuation Marks, Long

  Isaac Marion (2012). “Warm Bodies: A Novel”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

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• Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation.

  Lynne Truss

  Drawing, Roots, Attention

  "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, www.today.com. November 6, 2003.

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• I might not use capital letters. But I would definitely use an apostrophe…and probably a period. I’m a huge fan of punctuation.

  Rainbow Rowell

  Fans, Use, Letters

  Rainbow Rowell (2016). “The Rainbow Rowell YA Collection”, p.158, St. Martin's Griffin

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• Balthazar was the kind of guy who used totally correct spelling and punctuation even when he was texting, which was sort of bizarrely hot. She was in serious trouble if commas could get her going.

  Claudia Gray

  Guy, Hot, Texting

  Claudia Gray (2012). “Balthazar”, p.23, Harper Collins

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• The key to a successful relationship isn’t just in the words, it’s in the choice of punctuation. When you’re in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations.

  David Levithan

  Successful, Keys, Differences

  "The Lover's Dictionary". Book by David Levithan, www.sfgate.com. 2010.

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• Every ending is arbitrary, because the end is where you write The end. A period, a dot of punctuation, a point of stasis. A pinprick in the paper: you could put your eye to it and see through, to the other side, to the beginning of something else. Or, as Tony says to her students, Time is not a solid, like wood, but a fluid, like water or the wind. It doesn't come neatly cut into even-sized length, into decades and centuries. Nevertheless, for our purposes we have to pretend it does. The end of any history is a lie in which we all agree to conspire.

  Margaret Atwood

  Lying, Eye, Writing

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• Our kiss was niticlimactic. It wasn't that the kiss was bad, but it was just a note of punctuation in our long conversation, a parenthetical remark made in order to assure each other of a deeply felt agreement, a mutual offer of companionship, which is so much more rare than sexual passion or even love.

  Nicole Krauss

  Passion, Kissing, Agreement

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• From the reader's point of view, punctuation provides a map for one who must otherwise drive blindly past the by-ways, intersections, and detours of a writer's thought.

  Mina P. Shaughnessy

  Writing, Past, Views

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• The person you are (in total, at that moment in time) is what creates the story you're writing. It's infused in every piece of punctuation, in the plot, in the most minor character who crosses the page. It's all your voice.

  Victor LaValle

  Writing, Character, Voice

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• People… they don’t write anymore – they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English.

  David Duchovny

  Kings, Stupid, Writing

  "Fictional character: Hank Moody". Californication (TV Series), www.imdb.com. 2007.

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• I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

  Mario Batali

  Italian, Doors, Expression

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• They still believe in God, the family, angels, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other obsolete stuff.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Believe, Angel, Stuff

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