Sentences Quotes - Page 35

• I want to go home. Then he mentally underlined the last sentence three times, rewrote it in huge letters in red ink, and circled it before putting a number of exclamation marks next to it in his mental margin.

  Neil Gaiman

  Home, Exclamation Marks, Numbers

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• Reading activates and exercises the mind. Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on the page, make them into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into concepts. Reading pushes us to use our imagination and makes us more creatively inclined.

  Benjamin Carson

  Reading, Exercise, Imagination

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• Good night, Seth." "So you're running again, then?" One of his boots thudded on the floor. "I'm not running." The other boot hit the floor. "Really?" "Really. It's just—" She stopped; she didn't have anything that would finish that sentence and be honest. "Maybe you should slow down, so I can catch you." He paused, waiting.

  Melissa Marr

  Good Night, Running, Waiting

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• There's not even real *popularity* at my school." "That," Coli said emphatically, "is a sentence that has only ever been spoken by popular people.

  John Green

  Real, School, People

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• What would it be like to live in a library of melted books. With sentences streaming over the floor and all the punctuation settled to the bottom as a residue. It would be confusing. Unforgivable. A great adventure.

  Anne Carson

  Book, Adventure, Confusing

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• I'm not through with you yet. Are you prepared to accept your punishment?" I nodded reluctantly. I wasn't sure what a vampire's punishment might be. But I was ready to find out. "I sentence you to a thousand kisses," he said. "Can I begin now?

  Ellen Schreiber

  Kissing, Punishment, Vampire

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• An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.

  Iain Banks

  Encounters, Way, Problem

  "What are the great sentences in genre fiction?" Claire Armitstead, www.theguardian.com. March 27, 2014.

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• To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as "Thank God its Friday" (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a Pavlovian "kill" response in the average stickler.

  Lynne Truss

  Friday, Writing, Average

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• One open, one closed. It was no wonder that the first image that came to mind when I thought of either of my sisters was a door. With Kirsten, it was the front one to our house, through which she was always coming in or out, usually in mid-sentence, a gaggle of friends trailing behind her. Whitney’s was the one to her bedroom, which she preferred to keep shut between her and the rest of us, always.

  Sarah Dessen

  Doors, House, Mind

  Sarah Dessen (2006). “The Truth About Forever”, p.388, Penguin

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• At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Writing, Self, Risk

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• but it's not safe and I can feel him slipping away, so I just get out one more sentence. "Stay with me." As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him whisper a word back but I don't catch it.

  Suzanne Collins

  Sleep, Safe, Slipping

  Suzanne Collins (2010). “Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)”, p.159, Scholastic Inc.

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• Things are going so well. We’re volleying words back and forth. Everything she says, I have something I can say back. We’re sparking, and part of me just wants to sit back and watch. We’re clicking. Not because a part of me is fitting into a part of her. But because our words are clicking into each other to form sentences and our sentences are clicking into each other to form dialogue and our dialogue is clicking together to form this scene from this ongoing movie that’s as comfortable as it is unrehearsed.

  David Levithan

  Together, Watches, Our Words

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2014). “Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist”, p.47, Egmont UK

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• Mother,” Hyacinth said with a great show of solicitude, “you know I love you dearly—” “Why is it,” Violet pondered, “that I have come to expect nothing good when I hear a sentence beginning in that manner?

  Julia Quinn

  Mother, Love You, Violet

  Julia Quinn (2005). “It's in his kiss”

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• See, when you lie to me it hurts," Rixon said, swiping an imaginary tear. "I thought we had something special. I thought our joint eternal sentences of damnation were our bond.

  Becca Fitzpatrick

  Hurt, Lying, Special

  Becca Fitzpatrick (2013). “The Complete Hush, Hush Saga: includes Hush, Hush; Crescendo; Silence and Finale”, p.1159, Simon and Schuster

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• People who start a sentence with personally (and they're always women) ought to be thrown to the lions. It's a repulsive habit.

  Georgette Heyer

  People, Lions, Habit

  Georgette Heyer (2010). “Death in the Stocks”, p.43, Random House

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• Having got into bed and turned out the light, I quietly burst into tears because I am not a good person. As they came and went for some minutes, I was concerned with the words following 'because' in the previous sentence, rewriting them over and over in my head until they seemed to be as close to the truth as it was possible for me to make them.

  Edward Gorey

  Light, Tears, Bed

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• To some extent, each sentence has to be the whole story.

  Lyn Hejinian

  Stories, Whole

  Lyn Hejinian (2013). “My Life and My Life in the Nineties”, p.56, Wesleyan University Press

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• What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you've laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone.

  Joan Didion

  Two, Gone, Flow

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Nov 30, 2013

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• I've come down in the world. I've slid to a place where the ceiling is low and there isn't much room for me to move.Most of the time I'm used to it ... I accepted my sentence and do not brood or look back. But sometimes a shift makes me remember. Routine is ruffled and a new start makes me suddenly conscious of what I've become -

  Leila Aboulela

  Moving, Ceilings, Routine

  Leila Aboulela (2015). “Minaret”, p.4, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• 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.

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• I would prove to you that being different isn't a death sentence but a call to arms.

  Jodi Picoult

  Being Different, Arms, Prove

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “Handle with Care: A Novel”, p.412, Simon and Schuster

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• No its you," she said. How far away her voice sounded, as though it had traveled to London already, ahead of her. "Your ducal self assurance. Everything will give way to you. Even Satan's own storm." "You are definitely improving," he said. "Full mocking sentences.

  Loretta Chase

  Self, Voice, Giving

  Loretta Chase, Anna Campbell (2014). “Regency Rogues and Rakes: Silk is for Seduction / Scandal Wears Satin / Vixen in Velvet / Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed / A Rake's Midnight Kiss / What a Duke Dares (Mills & Boon e-Book Collections)”, p.157, HarperCollins UK

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• The sentence im reading is terrific.

  J. D. Salinger

  Reading, Terrific

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• Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.

  Pat Conroy

  Book, Heart, Character

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• Who's Myrnin?" Claire controlled an urge to roll her eyes. "Badass crazy vampire scientist who's my boss." "You realize no part of that sentence made sense, right?

  Rachel Caine

  Badass, Crazy, Eye

  Rachel Caine (2010). “Ghost Town: The Morganville Vampires”, p.231, Penguin

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