Sentences Quotes - Page 37

• A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.

  John Irving

  Life

  John Irving (1978). “The world according to Garp”, Pocket

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• ...Ned always said that the man who passes the sentence should swing the blade, though he never took any joy in the duty. But I would, oh, yes.

  George R. R. Martin

  Men, Swings, Joy

  George R. R. Martin (2011). “A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle: A Song of Ice and Fire Series: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows”, p.1382, Bantam

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• The (capital punishment) controversy passes the anarch by. For him, the linking of death and punishment is absurd. In this respect, he is closer to the wrongdoer than to the judge, for the high-ranking culprit who is condemned to death is not prepared to acknowledge his sentence as atonement; rather, he sees his guilt in his own inadequacy. Thus, he recognizes himself not as a moral but as a tragic person.

  Ernst Junger

  Punishment, Judging, Guilt

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• ...when the words pour out of you just right, you understand that these sentences are all part of a river flowing out of your own distant, hidden ranges, and all words become the dissolving snow that feeds your mountain streams forever. The language locks itself in the icy slopes of our own high passes, and it is up to us, the writers, to melt the glaciers within us. When these glaciers break off, we get to call them novels, the changelings of our burning spirits, our life's work.

  Pat Conroy

  Break Off, Rivers, Snow

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• The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the 'creativity of language,' that is, the speaker's ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately UNDERSTOOD by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are 'familiar.

  Noam Chomsky

  Creativity, May, Bears

  Noam Chomsky (2012). “Selected Readings on Transformational Theory”, p.8, Courier Corporation

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• In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Jobs, Character, Suspense

  "Jhumpa Lahiri Was Abandoned by Her Editor" by Mark Follman, March 21, 2012.

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• There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to. It's like trying to write a song, making tiny tweaks, reading it out loud, shifting things to make it sound a certain way... Sometimes it feels like digging out of a hole, but sometimes it feels like flying. When it's working and the rhythm's there, it does feel like magic to me.

  Susan Orlean

  Song, Reading, Writing

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• To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence.

  George Orwell

  Art, Struggle, Writing

  George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945”

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• Oh, I know I'll improve. It's just that my life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes now. That's a sentence I read once, and I say it over to comfort myself in these times that try the soul.

  Anne Shirley

  Perfect, Soul, Trying

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• Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.

  Annie Besant

  Lying, Responsibility, Two

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• Paranoia is an illness I contracted in institutions. It is not the reason for my sentences to reform school and prison. It is the effect, not the cause.

  Jack Abbott

  School, Reform, Causes

  Jack Henry Abbott (1982). “In the belly of the beast: letters from prison”, Vintage

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• That kind of thing happens to black people every day in this country, and they don't receive that kind of sentence he did, which was to go to prison on the weekends; I think he lectured there-an outside lecturer.

  Ishmael Reed

  Country, Weekend, Thinking

  "Ishmael Reed – July 1-7, 1983, in Emeryville, California". Interviewed with Reginald Martin, aalbc.com. July 1, 1983.

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• All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Writing, Character

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.171, Courier Corporation

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• Once you have found the right shot to introduce the scene-written your first declarative sentence-then the rest flows. You've found the key to the whole scene.

  John Huston

  Keys, Flow, Firsts

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• Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence "Two times two is four."

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Two, Doubt, Four

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• It is important that gang members are aware that if they engage in aggravated assault, maiming, kidnapping, or manslaughter that they will receiving a minimum sentence of 30 years.

  Albert Wynn

  Gang Members, Years, Aggravation

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• I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Stories, Want, Next

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• You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation; you revel in the smoke that the words send up.

  Toni Morrison

  Connotation, Rely, Smoke

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• Her companion's discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch, to nothing more than a short, decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as long as she could,with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition to that of a self-assured man, especially where the beauty of her own sex is concerned, ventured at length to vary the subject.

  Jane Austen

  Sex, Men, Self

  Jane Austen, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Jane Austen: All novels, short stories, letters and poems”, p.974, GENERAL PRESS

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• To wait - only to wait - without even the final merciful deprivation of hope.Sometimes I think that some secret court must have tried and condemned me, unheard, to this heavy sentence.

  Anna Kavan

  Thinking, Waiting, Secret

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• But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.

  Plato

  Running, Strong, Thinking

  Plato (0101). “Apology, Crito and Phaedo of Socrates”, p.29, Prabhat Prakashan

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• His intelligence only exacerbated the guilt Kugel felt for bringing him into the world. It was one thing to have condemned a child to life, that was criminal enough, but life was a sentence more easily served by fools.

  Shalom Auslander

  Children, Guilt, Criminals

  Shalom Auslander (2012). “Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel”, p.201, Penguin

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• I willingly trust myself to chance. I let my thoughts wander, I digress, not only sitting at my work, but all day long, all night even. It often happens that a sentence suddenly runs through my head before I go to bed, or when I am unable to sleep, and I get up again and write it down.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Running, Writing, Sleep

  Simone de Beauvoir (1977). “Force of circumstance”

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• Read it aloud to yourself because that's the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK.

  Diana Athill

  Writing, Way, Rhythm

  "Ten rules for writing fiction" by Diana Athill, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• I found I'm quite happy working on a sentence for an hour or more, searching for the right phrase, the right word. I compare it to the work of a stonecutter - chipping away at the raw material until it's just right, or as right as you can get it.

  Harriet Doerr

  Writing, Phrases, Stones

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

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