I had a bad stutter when I was really young. I couldn’t get a sentence out. Like, ‘D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-ad.’ And that turned into a mumble.
I find that when I write for children, I am more hopeful, less cynical. I don’t use different words or a different sentence structure. I just hope more.
In my writing, I try to combine all my favorite elements of journalism – accuracy, real characters that exist on this planet – with all my favorite elements of literature: a sense of flow, of propulsion, of wanting to read every sentence.
To be rapping in a musical on Broadway is just – that sentence doesn’t make any sense in my brain.
Our research shows that nearly 60% of recent offenders who engaged with a community-based alcohol programme did not go on to reoffend in the two years following treatment. Offenders given a community sentence including mental health treatment have also shown to be significantly less likely to reoffend.
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.
There is no way for me to replicate for you what a sentence reads like for a Chinese reader.
In PA, the Lieutenant Governor serves as the Chair of the Board of Pardons. That means that I sit as the head of our five-person board, where we hear testimony and process applications for pardons and sentence commutation.
You write three pages over six hours, and you don’t feel like you’ve gotten anywhere, but if you’ve done a beautiful metaphor or a lovely sentence, or you finally got to some moment you wanted, then that’s worth it. Then you can close your computer and get a little relief.
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.
While driving to work, I’ll choose to think about a particular subject rather than just have random thought streams landing on one subject or another. For example, I might think about the structure of an opinion. Or I might think about the first sentence of an opinion, refining it.
You know you’re a bigot when you can’t take out the word ‘Muslim’ from a sentence you stated and replace it with ‘Jew’ and still have it be socially acceptable.
If you are moneyed or educated, you will get a different sentence than someone who is not.
Writers are in control of editing processes – making a sentence better, cutting out a paragraph. But the initial outpouring has very little to do with conscious control or manipulation.
I don’t think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I’m rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listening to probably 20-60 different songs in that time.
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’ll live with whatever sentence I’ll get in the end – I’ll just finish my book.
Today, in the newspapers and magazines, the first sentence is, my restaurant is expensive.
Most laws condemn the soul and pronounce sentence. The result of the law of my God is perfect. It condemns but forgives. It restores – more than abundantly – what it takes away.
Newspapers are so boring. How can you read a newspaper that starts with a 51-word lead sentence?
The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.
One of the best predictors of policy around is Thomas Ferguson’s investment theory of politics, as he calls it – very outstanding political economist – which essentially – I mean, to say it in a sentence, he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state.
I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.
Every sentence stands on its own. Whether that’s fair or not, that’s kind of the way it is.
Patenting tends to get people’s juices flowing when you put the word ‘gene’ and the word ‘patent’ in the same sentence. And understandably so. This is stuff we’re carrying around – all of us – inside all of our cells. Should somebody be able to lay claim to it?
I much preferred Latin to Greek. I loved the language being such a pattern that you could not shift a word without the whole sentence falling to pieces.
I have a hard time revising sentences, because I spend an inordinate amount of time on each sentence, and the sentence before it, and the sentence after it.
I am convinced that the world-wide protests during the Rivonia trial saved Mandela and his fellow-accused from a death sentence. But in South Africa, a life sentence means imprisonment until death – or until the defeat of the government which holds these men prisoner.
Even people who despise ego and aspire to humility, who plan to be humble once they are successful, are worried that actually enacting those beliefs would sentence them to a life of obscurity or weakness or failure.
It’s funny, though, speaking of fathers and sons, because me and John Goodman played father and son, like, five or six years ago in the film ‘Death Sentence,’ and I got back with him again in ‘Inside Llewyn Davis.’
I work very hard at each story, at every sentence.
In the 1970s, family history wasn’t yet thought of a serious field for study. I was terrified of being laughed at by other historians. I called my book ‘The Social Origins of Private Life.’ It should have been ‘As Pompous as You Want to Be.’ Every sentence was academic jargon, and if I said X, I qualified it with Y.
It’s not as if I’ve ever been to prison or been close to going to prison. The closest I’ve got is knowing people who have been in jail – after all, I was a member of Parliament – and visiting them there during their sentence.
Some days, you will sit down, and you write tens of thousands of words. Others, you have to force yourself to write a single sentence.
In one sentence, I’d describe myself as indescribable. But, I wouldn’t end it with a period. I’d end it with three dots.
Sometimes I test myself saying, ‘If I get a death sentence if I don’t make this movie, would I still make this movie?’
If you are stymied as a writer, if it’s just not coming together, then take the pressure off and don’t feel that you need to write 1,000 words today; just write one really good sentence.
I would be a rich man if I had a quarter for every time one of my Republican colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee utters some variation of the sentence, ‘President Obama doesn’t have a strategy to defeat ISIS.’ It’s their calling card on the committee – and on the campaign trail.
Praise the Lord, but do me a favor, don’t ever say ‘Stephen Baldwin’ and ‘ministry’ in the same sentence.
I know of no sentence that can induce such immediate and brazen lying as the one that begins, ‘Have you read – .’
People think I’m clever, which is hilarious. I’m like, ‘When did this happen? People used to think I couldn’t string a sentence together.’
We are all serving a life sentence, and good behavior is our only hope for a pardon.
I struggled tremendously with anxiety and depression related in part to my sexuality and growing up in a time when to be gay felt to me like a death sentence.
I’m very bad at ending sentences. A lot times I just want to say, ‘That’s the end of my sentence. I have nothing more to say.’
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.
I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.
I think it’s insulting to an audience to make them sit and watch a film and then give them a message in one sentence.
In my office I have a sign that says, ‘Don’t think. Just write!’ and that’s how I work. I try not to worry about each word, or even each sentence or paragraph. For me, stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times.
Fluency can be a sign that nothing is happening; fluency can actually be my signal to stop, while being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.
The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence.
Hank Williams seemed, like, so total to me, so committed to the lyric. He would actually rip the ends of the words off at the, you know – the end of the sentence. It sounded like he’d bite into the word and rip it off.
Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.
I recall with sorrow the demise of 233 party cadres who lost their lives after the special court delivered its verdict on my sentence.
My grandfather used to write one sentence every day in his journal: ‘I love Anne more than ever today.’ I think that was his meditation – keeping him in his marriage, and also his appreciation for it. It was very touching.
