I have not written a perfect sentence, in the literary sense. It's a lot easier to throw a perfect pass than to write a perfect sentence, if that sentence is meant to perform more than a mechanical function.
I think I am really easygoing. Well... as I was about halfway through that sentence, I thought, 'No, actually you're really picky.' But the things I ask for are really simple to do.
Who on earth is going to use 'utilize' in a text message, a whopping seven characters including the always-hard-to-type 'z,' when you can say the exact same thing in three characters? I can't think of a sentence in which 'use' can't replace 'utilize.'
I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.
The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words.
Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside?
I usually give a book 40 pages. If it doesn't grab me by then, adios. With young adult books, you can usually tell by Page 4 if it's worth the time. The author establishes the conflict early, sometimes in the first sentence. The themes of hope, family, friendship and overcoming hardship appeal to most everyone.
It's true that stammerers can become more adept at sentence construction.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.
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 language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.
The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town.
And in the last sentence I would like also to mention that Poland is one of the countries with which the United States has run strategic dialogues since last year.
As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.
I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat and flatter it.
Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.
I find I can write for two lines, and then I have nothing else to say. For me, the only way to find something comes through the sentence level and sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there's something more to say.
Interviews make me so nervous - I can't get a sentence out of my mouth.
Though I have seldom done anything to my own satisfaction, I am better satisfied with the translation of the New Testament than I ever expected to be. The language is, I believe, simple, plain, intelligible; and I have endeavored, I hope successfully, to make every sentence a faithful representation of the original.
In truth, we have delayed to pass sentence on the person of our lord the king, waiting, if perhaps he may, by God's grace, repent; but we will pass it ere long unless he does repent.
Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.
When writing for a mass audience, put a fact in every sentence.
With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
In general, shorter is better. If you can encapsulate your idea into a single captivating sentence, you're halfway home.
You have had indeed a fair trial. It is a shocking thing when a judge of your high office is shown to have betrayed the truth and his honor, and I sentence you to the penitentiary.
I get just as much of a thrill out of constructing a good sentence that gets a laugh at the end as I do from a joke.
'TIME's spell-check always admonishes me whenever I compose a sentence in the passive voice, a warning that is often ignored by me.
The first sentence of a book is a promise.
There are no seasons anymore. Fashion has become one long run-on sentence.
Well we took it apart scene by scene. We examined every sentence, every full stop, every comma. He has a most wonderful eye for detail, Roman, and you know, he's a very good artist.
I don't look at emails, Internet or newspapers before 1 P.M. I wake at 7 A.M., eat fruit, drink tea or coffee, and read what I've achieved, or not achieved, the previous day. Then I take a shower and work on my next sentence until 1 P.M. After I've done emails and so on, I write again from 3 P.M. until 8 P.M.; then I socialise.
Doing a thing by law, or according to law, is only carrying the law into execution. And punishing a man by, or according to, the sentence or judgment of his peers, is only carrying that sentence or judgment into execution.
My wife and I spent the winter in Worcestershire. This allowed me to tell everyone back home in the States, 'We are wintering in Worcestershire.' This may be a sentence that has never actually been uttered in human history, even by people who spend all their winters in Worcestershire.
That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a plot that sustain interest from the first sentence to the last. But that is not what I do at all.
It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.
When you translate poetry in particular, you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words, sentences, phrases, the triple tension between the line of verse, the syntax and the sentence.
