I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English lang...
Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you create in every sentence as many resonances and dou...
Beadle: [after the judge has sentenced a boy to death by hangin] Thank you, your honor, just the sentence we wanted. Judge Turpin: Was he guilty? Beadle: Well, if not, he'd certainly done something to warrant a hanging. Judge Turpin: What man has not...
I'm crap at interviews. I'm just not very good at sentences.
Sentences are not as such either true or false.
Retirement isn’t a goal; it’s a sentence.
Life is a sentence without any fullstops.
In one short sentence, it is captaincy that counts
This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't.
However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.
We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I was taught from this was not to begin a sentence with And. I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with And, but I was told that English had changed...
Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then th...
I've always told people that for each person there is a sentence--a series of words--which has the power to destroy him. When Fat told me about Leon Stone I realized (this came years after the first realization) that another sentence exists, another ...
Do not put statements in the negative form. And don't start sentences with a conjunction. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. Never use a long word when a diminu...
I don't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with Charles Chaplin.
My mother thought me being gay was a death sentence.
The first sentence of a book is a promise.
Challenging orthodoxy is a death sentence in Washington.
The words of the world want to make sentences.
Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.
