Quotes about adverb

A collection of quotes on the topic of adverb.

Quotes about adverb

Stephen King photo

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Hell
Henry James photo

“I'm glad you like adverbs — I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Letter to Miss M. Betham Edwards (5 January 1912).

Joseph Heller photo

“Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Death
Stephen King photo

“All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Daniel Handler photo

“It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs (2006), Truly
Context: If you follow the diamond in my mother's ring from Africa to Germany to California to Arizona to Wisconsin, in the heel of a grandmother, in the beak of a magpie, in the gravel of the path, in someone else's novel, in the center of the earth where the volcanoes are from, you would forget the miracle, the reason diamonds end up in people's fingers in the first place. it is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes, it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.

Love , People , Way , Bird

“Whether we are writing prose or verse we must never use language in a merely decorative way, every qualifying word, every adjective and adverb must be carefully inspected & weighed before it is used and ask before its use, is it really necessary.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

A Proper Gentleman, 1977

Way
Antonin Scalia photo

“Abusive' (or 'hostile,' which in this context I take to mean the same thing) does not seem to me a very clear standard - and I do not think clarity is at all increased by adding the adverb objectively or by appealing to a reasonable person's notion of what the vague word means.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17 http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-1168.ZC.html (1993) (concurring).
1990s

Hostility , Thinking , Personality