“Have you ever tried to split sawdust?”

— Eugene McCarthy

Response to accusations that he had split the US Democratic Party by campaigning for president. NBC TV (23 October 1969)

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Eugene McCarthy 16

American politician 1916–2005

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes book Snakecharm

Source: Snakecharm

“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—
As if my Brain had split—
I tried to match it—Seam by Seam—
But could not make it fit.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

““You split hairs.”
“Better to split hairs than the heads beneath them.””

Michael Flynn book Eifelheim

Source: Eifelheim (2006), Chapter XXV (p. 447)

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Source: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Anti-GLBT sentiment is a primary tool for organizing the far-right and it is stronger then ever as a means to split communities and reinforce constituencies.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

“When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

In a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
Context: By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.