#paragraph

The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out. ↗

— Irwin Shaw

#almost #always #best #last #left

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. ↗

— William Strunk, Jr.

#drawing #lines #machine #paragraph #parts

I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies. ↗

— Brendan Gill

#butterflies #cloud #cram #facts #full

I've been lucky. I've met a lot of baseball people, and I've learned to value people who talk - people who talk well and in long sentences and even long paragraphs. ↗

— Roger Angell

#been #even #i #learned #long

For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex. ↗

— William H. Gass

#country #eye #flies #landmarks #looking

Truth be told, I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted. And, of course, my idea of entertaining might not be yours. I'm in complete agreement with all those people who say, regarding movies, 'I just want to be entertained.' This populist position is much derided by my academic colleagues as simpleminded and unsophisticated, evidence of questionable analytical and critical acuity. But I agree with the premise, and I too just want to be entertained. That I am almost never entertained by what entertains other people who just want to be entertained doesn't make us philosophically incompatible. It just means that we shouldn't go to movies together. ↗

— Richard Russo

#humor #experience

Gordon Edgley's sudden death came as a shock to everyone - not least himself. One moment he was in his study, seven words into the twenty-fifth sentence of the final chapter of his new book, And the Darkness Rained upon Them, and the next he was dead. A tragic loss, his mind echoed numbly as he slipped away. ↗

— Derek Landy

#first-paragraph #humor #young-adult #death