Quotes about sentencing
page 2

“In my sentences I go where no man has gone before.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

“In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

People, Lie, Way, Change

“Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.”

Orson Scott Card book Empire

Source: Empire

Behavior, Parent, Time

“People who start a sentence with personally (and they're always women) ought to be thrown to the lions. It's a repulsive habit.”

Georgette Heyer (1902–1974) British historical romance and detective fiction novelist

Source: Death in the Stocks

Women, People, Personality

“You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“I'm not stupid!" In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Shadow

Source: Ender's Shadow

Stupidity

“If I were asked for a one-sentence sound
bite on religion, I would say I was against it.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Religion

“And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.”

John Irving In One Person

Source: In One Person

Love, Books, Way, Tear

“An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.”

Iain Banks book Excession

Source: Excession

Way, Problem

“One day, maybe not in the next few weeks, but certainly in the conceivable future, someone will be able to refer to me without using the word 'arse' somewhere in the sentence.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Future

“From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Mandarins

Source: The Mandarins

Time

“If you leave me naked and waiting on the bed without making love to me, I’ll—” I didn’t get to finish the threat. I think it was the word “naked,” though maybe it was “bed,” but before I finished my sentence, he was on me. Mercy to Adam”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Love, Making love, Thinking, Waiting

“Never start a sentence with the words 'No offense.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

“Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Books, Heart

“I am trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“His sentences didn't seem to have any verbs, which was par for a politician. All nouns, no action.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Charlie All Night

“What was Aristotle’s life?’ Well, the answer lay in a single sentence: ‘He was born, he thought, he died.’ And all the rest is pure anecdote.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Life

“Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Motivation

“The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.”

Michael Ondaatje book In the Skin of a Lion

Source: In the Skin of a Lion

Time

“You get older and you learn there is one sentence just four worlds long and if you can say it to yourself it offers more comfort than almost any other. It goes like this… Ready ”
“Ready.”
“At least I tried.”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

World, Learning

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Life, Money, Evil

“You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Perfection

“Even at the end of the road, read the first sentence, there is a road. Even at the end of the road, a new road stretches out, endless and open, a road that may lead anywhere. To him who will find it, there is always a road.”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

Source: Pendragon Before The War: Book Two Of The Travelers (Pendragon

Reading

“What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you've laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

Time

“There would be a trial and there would be a judge. The only problem was, there could only be one sentence.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

Problem

“No, what I felt was the torment of waiting, stuck between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next which might or might not bring a hail storm, plane crash, poetic justice, or a miraculous reversal.”

Nicole Krauss book Great House

Source: Great House

Justice, Waiting

“I mean, if you're asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it's absurd to tack a 'sir' on to every sentence. The two things don't go together.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Thank You, Jeeves

Source: Thank You, Jeeves

“… the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Life

“Here's your first problem," he said, pointing at a sentence. "'Religion is the opium of the people.' Well, I don't know about people, but I think you'll find that the opium of pirates is actual opium.”

Gideon Defoe (1975) British writer

Source: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists

People, Religion, Problem, Thinking

“When you know you love someone, when you know it's finally the right time, you don't just wait around for the right words, you just say the sentences even if they're all mixed up and imperfect.”

Patti Callahan Henry American writer

Source: Coming Up for Air

Love, Time, Waiting

“… sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Source: Landing

“The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.”

Claudia Rankine book Citizen: An American Lyric

Source: Citizen: An American Lyric

Life, Past

“I listened as the words became sentences and the sentences became pages and the pages became feelings and voices and places and people.”

Jennifer Donnelly A Northern Light

Source: A Northern Light

People, Feeling

“but it's not safe and I can feel him slipping away, so I just get out one more sentence. "Stay with me."
As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him whisper a word back but I don't catch it.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Feeling, Sleep

“It's fascinating. You know all these words, and they’re all English, but when you string them together into sentences, they just don’t make any sense.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Variant: It’s fascinating. You know all these words, and they’re all English, but when you string them together into sentences, they just don’t make any sense.
Source: City of Fallen Angels

Sense

“Books don’t change people; paragraphs do; sometimes even sentences.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Variant: Books don't change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences.
Source: A Godward Life: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life

People, Books, Change

“Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.”

John Jakes (1932) American historical novelist and fantasy writer

“As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs… The way I write is who I am, or have become…”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Way, Sense

“I have the death sentence in seven genres.”

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: The Well of Lost Plots

Death

“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved

Understanding

“If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a "genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.”

Robert M. Sapolsky book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Source: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Strong

“Iggy Pop looks right at me as he sings the line: 'America takes drugs in psychic defence'; only he changes 'America' to 'Scatlin', and defines us mair accurately in a single sentence than all the others have ever done.”

Irvine Welsh book Trainspotting

Source: Trainspotting

Change, Singing

“I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

“Equations are the devil's sentences.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

“It is clear that the world is purely parodic, in other words, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.
Ever since sentences started to circulate in brains devoted to reflection, an effort at total identification has been made, because with the aid of a copula each sentence ties one thing to another; all things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of Ariadne’s thread leading thought into its own labyrinth.
But the copula of terms is no less irritating than the copulation of bodies. And when I scream I AM THE SUN an integral erection results, because the verb to be is the vehicle of amorous frenzy.
Everyone is aware that life is parodic and that it lacks an interpretation. Thus lead is the parody of gold. Air is the parody of water. The brain is the parody of the equator. Coitus is the parody of crime.”

Georges Bataille book The Solar Anus

The Solar Anus (1927)

Life, World, Effort, Water

“I’ve heard it said: ‘By his home you shall know him’; and we all know that we must pay attention to anyone who reverses the subject and auxiliary verb in his sentence.”

Steven Brust book Issola

Source: Issola

Home

“I'm not through with you yet. Are you prepared to accept your punishment?"
I nodded reluctantly. I wasn't sure what a vampire's punishment might be. But I was ready to find out.
"I sentence you to a thousand kisses," he said.
"Can I begin now?”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Source: Royal Blood

Kiss

“It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Source: Daniel Deronda

Knowledge

“Who's Myrnin?"
Claire controlled an urge to roll her eyes. "Badass crazy vampire scientist who's my boss."
"You realize no part of that sentence made sense, right?”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

Sense, Parting

“I was heading to Nebraska. Now there's a sentence you don't want to say too often if you can possibly help it.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America

Help

“No" is a complete sentence.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

“I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

“Mother,” Hyacinth said with a great show of solicitude,
“you know I love you dearly—”
“Why is it,” Violet pondered, “that I have come to expect
nothing good when I hear a sentence beginning in
that manner?”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: It's in His Kiss

Love

“Good God. I don’t believe St. Vincent and the word ‘celibacy’ have ever been mentioned in the same sentence before.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

God

“Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Source: Cool Memories

Pleasure

“Say it,” she said, and he said, “I love you. I’ll always love you. Forever. It’s a life sentence. Now put the damn ring on.”

Jennifer Crusie book Welcome to Temptation

Source: Welcome to Temptation

Love, Life

“I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“The Korean man nodded, the way you do when you’re a foreigner and understand that someone has finished a sentence.”

David Sedaris book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Source: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Way, Understanding

“Like O'Rielly, we'll grab the most important word of each sentence… 'The' for example. Also, I'll say, 'I'm angry,' and the graphic will read, 'Colbert angry.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Reading

“Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.”

Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales

General Prologue, l. 305 - 310
Source: The Canterbury Tales
Context: Of studie took he most cure and most hede.
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

“There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

“I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.”

Zadie Smith book The Autograph Man

Source: The Autograph Man

Friendship

“One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die… and accepts his sentence undismayed.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Age, Learning, Personality, Adulthood

“Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.”
Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam.

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

His famous response to his judges upon his conviction as a heretic, prior to his transfer to the civil authorities for execution. (16 February 1600); as quoted by Gaspar Schopp of Breslau in a letter to Conrad Rittershausen; as translated in Giordano Bruno : His Life and Thought (1950) by Dorothea Waley Singer http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/bruno00.htm <br class="br">Variant translations:<br>Perhaps your fear in passing judgment on me is greater than mine in receiving it.<br>It may be you fear more to deliver judgment upon me than I fear judgment.<br>You pronounce sentence upon me with greater fear than I receive it.

Fear

“Did you just use juxtaposition in a sentence?"
"Yes, Sage" he said patiently. "We use it all the time with art,… That, and I know how to use a dictionary”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Art, Time

“Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.”

Jasper Fforde book Lost in a Good Book

Source: Lost in a Good Book

“She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.”

Zadie Smith book The Autograph Man

Source: The Autograph Man

Hope, Weather

“For each person there is a sentence — a series of words — which has the power to destroy him”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

VALIS (1981)
Context: For each person there is a sentence — a series of words — which has the power to destroy him … another sentence exists, another series of words, which will heal the person. If you're lucky you will get the second; but you can be certain of getting the first: that is the way it works. On their own, without training, individuals know how to deal out the lethal sentence, but training is required to deal out the second.

Personality

“There are very few innocent sentences in writing.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Source: The Essays

Imagination, Knowledge

“I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.”

Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) Czech bookwriter and writer

Beauty

“Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Love, World

“Defeating one ant had taken all my energy. (I don’t think I have ever written a sadder sentence than that.)”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

Thinking

“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.”

Louise Erdrich (1954) writer from the United States

Source: The Plague of Doves

“Just start the sentence… and see what happens. This is how we write.”

Jincy Willett American writer

Source: The Writing Class

“Abbe Faria: Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, Vengeance is mine.
Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God.
Abbe Faria: It doesn't matter. He believes in you.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo, V1

God

“I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Source: An examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy, and of the principal philosophical questions discussed in his writings

Hell

“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.”

Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American dancer and choreographer

Beauty, Art, Effort, Learning

“Lovers communicate not inside sentences, but between them. Passion lurks within interstice. It is grouting rather than bricks.”

Lionel Shriver book The Post-Birthday World

Source: The Post-Birthday World

Communication, Lovers, Passion

“But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but, really, how much genocide can one sentence handle?”

Chris Bohjalian book The Sandcastle Girls

Source: The Sandcastle Girls

History

“It was the building from the drawing in my brain.
And if you don’t think that’s a weird sentence, maybe you should reread it.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Thinking, Drawing

“I'm liking that I can throw any kind of sentence at her without worrying it's too out there.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love you. Like that.)”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Love, Way, Horse

“I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Lectures in America

“I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 2

Thinking

“Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence. Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

L'art pour l'art est un vain mot. L'art pour le vrai, l'art pour le beau et le bon, voilà la religion que je cherche....
Letter to Alexandre Saint-Jean, (19 April 1872), published in Calmann Lévy (ed.) Correspondance (1812-1876). Eng. Transl by Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort in Letters of George Sand Vol. III, p. 242

Truth, Beauty, Art

“You're talking!"
"I know I am."
"And making sense!"
"Thank you kindly."
"And in sentences!"
"I've noticed." - Stefan and Elena”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Nightfall

Sense

“Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.”

Richard Ford book The Lay of the Land

Source: The Lay of the Land

People

“My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Youth

“Then he almost but didn't say the two sentence he'd been meaning to say for years: part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you”

Nicole Krauss (1974) American novelist

Love, Parting

“An ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“When I type a title page, I hold it and I look at it and I think, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I’ll have a book.”

Betsy Byars (1928) American children's writer

Source: The Moon and I

Books, Thinking

“A reader told me recently, in London, said that 'well, I read that you write the last sentence first, so I always read your last sentence first.' And I said, 'oh, no, you're not supposed to do that.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

Reading

“He [the naturalist] looks upon every species of animal and plant now living as the individual letters which go to make up one of the volumes of our earth's history; and, as a few lost letters may make a sentence unintelligible, so the extinction of the numerous forms of life which the progress of cultivation invariably entails will necessarily render obscure this invaluable record of the past.”

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist

(1863) "On the physical geography of the Malay Archipelago." The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 33:217-234.

Life, History, Past, Animals

“At the great Washington March of 1963, the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis, speaking to the same enormous crowd that heard Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream," was prepared to ask the right question: "Which side is the federal government on?" That sentence was eliminated from his speech by organizers of the March to avoid offending the Kennedy Administration. But Lewis and his fellow SNCC workers had experienced, again and again, the strange passivity of the national government in the face of Southern violence, strange, considering how often this same government had been willing to intervene outside the country, often with overwhelming force.
John Lewis and SNCC had reason to be angry. John had been beaten bloody by a white mob in Montgomery as a Freedom Rider in the spring of 1961. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but done nothing itself except to have FBI agents take notes. Instead of insisting that blacks and whites had a right to ride the buses together, the Kennedy Administration called for a "cooling-off period," a moratorium on Freedom Rides.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

You Can't Be Neutral on A Moving Train (1994) Ch. 4: "My Name is Freedom": Albany, Georgia

Dreams, Spring, Question, Freedom

“Som-Som would later learn that the girl's name was Book. Ambiguous and suggestive sentences swirled out from the maroon bud of her nipple. Verses of elegant and cryptic passion followed the orbit of her left eye. Her fingers dripped with poetry.”

Alan Moore Alan Moore's Hypothetical Lizard

Alan Moore's Hypothetical Lizard, #1 (January 2005)
Alan Moore's Hypothetical Lizard (January 2005 - May 2005)

Books, Girl, Learning, Passion

“Now, the truth of the matter is that the idea of the meaning of the word 'federal' underwent a change from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution. Under the Constitution, the states gave up their sovereignty in the Calhounian sense. And if you have any doubt about that, let me just read a sentence from George Washington. 'It is obviously impracticable in the federal government of these states to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and safety of all.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

So all the rights of independent sovereignty, or some of those rights, have been surrendered.
2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Rebuttal

Truth, Idea, Sense, Change

Quotes about sentencing page 2

Quotes about sentencing
page 2