Sentences Quotes - Page 12

• If I were forced to sum up in one sentence what the Copenhagen interpretation says to me, it would be 'Shut up and calculate!'

  David Mermin

  Would Be, Shut Up, Copenhagen

  N. David Mermin (2016). “Why Quark Rhymes with Pork: And Other Scientific Diversions”, p.38, Cambridge University Press

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• If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest Hemingway walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead.

  Adam Haslett

  Bars, Shooting, Indecision

  "How To Write a (Good) Sentence" by Adam Haslett, www.slate.com. January 23, 2011.

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• Today, in the newspapers and magazines, the first sentence is, my restaurant is expensive.

  Masa Takayama

  Magazines, Today, Firsts

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• It's always nice to end your sentences with an exclamation mark, and not a comma.

  Joey Santiago

  Nice, Exclamation Marks, Ends

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• In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity.

  Marianne Moore

  Fabric, Excitement, Gravity

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• I sometimes think, with a sad delight, that if one day, in a future I no longer belong to, these sentences, that I write, last with praise, I will at last have the people who understand me, those mine, the true family to be born in and be loved... I will only be understood in effigy, when affection no longer repays the dead the unaffection that was, when living.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Writing, Thinking, People

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p. 182, 1982.

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• Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?

  Edgar Degas

  Real, Communication, Half

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• I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.

  Neil Gaiman

  Reading, Writing, Artist

  Neil Gaiman (2016). “The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction”, p.28, HarperCollins

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• A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit. He cannot, like the poet or historian, expatiate, and impress the mind.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Art, Mind, Moments

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmond Malone (1809). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.86

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• Politics is a life sentence. It's an obsessive, all-demanding, utterly fascinating, totally committing profession - stimulating, satisfying, stretching.

  Michael Heseltine

  Politics, Stretching, Obsessive

  "Noble obliges". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. March 10, 2006.

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• My best time to write is right after coffee and breakfast - four eggs because, full disclosure: I'm really a komodo dragon - and that's because then I'm energized but not so awake that the critical voice clicks on, the voice that sometimes says, "Don't write that," or "Man, that sentence is terrible - you should give up and go pet the cats."

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Giving Up, Coffee, Writing

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• I'm just very, very slow. I would not make it as a journalist, I've got to tell you. I sweat bullets over every sentence, and sometimes, you know, a day will pass and I've written one paragraph, and I've been at the computer for four hours.

  Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Sweat, Four, Bullets

  Source: content.time.com

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• To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Punishment, Murder, Crime

  "The Idiot". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1868 - 1869.

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• Always, in epochs when the languages and dialects of a culture have become outstripped by development of a practical sort, these languages become repetitive, formalised -- and ridiculous. Phrases, words, associations of sentences spin themselves out automatically, but have no effect: they have lost their power, their energy.

  Doris Lessing

  Dialect, Development, Association

  Doris Lessing (1979). “Shikasta: Re, Colonised Planet 5 : Personal, Psychological, Historical Documents Relating to Visit by Johor (George Sherban) Emissary (grade 9) 87th of the Period of the Last Days”

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• Sentences of the court on moral issues are always passed in absentia.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Issues, Morality, Court

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• Senescent judges show how patriotic they are by passing out hard sentences for tearing up a draft card or following one's conscience according to the principles established by our country at the Nuremburg trials.

  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

  Country, Patriotic, Judging

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• It's much easier to have nothing to live up to. You surprise people when you form a full sentence.

  Pamela Anderson

  People, Up To You, Surprise

  "Pamela Anderson: 'I'm not talking about my boobs - that's very 1999'" by Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. December 17, 2010.

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• Oh, remember that as certain as the historical fact, He died on Calvary; so certain is the prophetic fact, He shall reign, and you and I will stand there. I durst not touch that subject. Take it into your own hearts, and think about it, a kingdom, a judgment-seat, a crown, a gathered universe; separation, decision, execution of the sentence.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Heart, Thinking, Decision

  Alexander MacLaren “MacLaren's Commentary- Expositions of Holy Scripture”, Delmarva Publications, Inc.

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• I still have a hard time saying who Johnny [ Cash ] is in one sentence. He seemed so contradictory in his actions, and I think that's probably what is most fascinating about him and what made him such an interesting character to study.

  Joaquin Phoenix

  Character, Hard Times, Thinking

  Source: movieweb.com

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• You must never let your personal life be outpaced by your professional life. If you do, [if] your professional life takes more of your time than your personal life, then that's called stress, okay? And it's called worry and things like that. Worry is a sign that you're trying to be God. The greatest stress reliever to me is this sentence: God is God, and I'm not.

  Rick Warren

  Stress, Worry, Trying

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I write a sentence a thousand times, changing it all the time to look at it in different ways.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Writing, Different, Looks

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• It's all right when you are calling on a girl or talking with friends after dinner to run a conversation like a Sunday-school excursion, with stops to pick flowers; but in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods.

  George Horace Lorimer

  Girl, Running, Distance

  George Horace Lorimer (2016). “Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to his Son”, p.25, Lulu.com

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• Shakespeare is forever coming into our affairs -- putting in his oar, so to speak -- with some pat word or sentence.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Forever, Speak, Affair

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1970). “The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Ponkapog papers. A sea turn, and other matters”

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• I try to get a feeling of what's going on in the story before I put it down on paper, but actually most of this breaking-in period is one long, fantastic daydream, in which I think about anything but the work at hand. I can't turn out slews of stuff each day. I wish I could. I seem to have some neurotic need to perfect each paragraph—each sentence, even—as I go along.

  William Styron

  Writing, Thinking, Hands

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• When I was a kid, the punishment I disliked the most was writing sentences. My mother loved to make me record my transgressions--always a minimum of five hundred times--and she even bought special spiral notebooks for me to fill up.... No matter how many notebooks I went through, there was always another one waiting in the kitchen drawer.

  Clay Aiken

  Notebook, Mother, Writing

  Clay Aiken, Allison Glock (2004). “Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life”, p.10, Random House

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