#sentence

Toward the end of February 1954, James Beard was at work in his Greenwich Village kitchen doing what he most loved to do: cooking delicious meals. ↗

— Laura Shapiro

#food #food

Detachment produces a peculiar state of mind. Maybe that's the worst sentence of all, to be deprived of feeling what a human being ought to be entitled to feel. ↗

— James Dickey

#deprived #detachment #entitled #feel #feeling

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory. ↗

— Denis Diderot

#like #memory #nails #our #sentences

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience. ↗

— Miguel de Cervantes

#experience #long #long experience #proverb #sentence

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#again #along #behave #closely #constantly

I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence. ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#could #death #i #me #said

Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction. ↗

— Tom Jenkinson

#basic #chords #direction #evaporates #few

I was told to challenge every spiritual teacher, every world leader to utter the one sentence that no religion, no political party, and no nation on the face of the earth will dare utter: 'Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way. ↗

— Neale Donald Walsch

#another way #better #better way #challenge #dare

Censorship is saying: 'I'm the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine.' But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word - even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice. Such power will collapse because of a whisper. ↗

— Ai Weiwei

#because #censorship #collapse #conclusion #even

Deep down, Story Easton knew what would happen if she attempted to off herself—she would fail It was a matter of probability. This was not a new thing, failure. She was, had always been, a failure of fairy-tale proportion. Quitting wasn’t Story’s problem. She had tried, really tried, lots of things during different stages of her life—Girl Scours, the viola, gardening, Tommy Andres from senior year American Lit—but zero cookie sales, four broken strings, two withered azalea bushes, and one uniquely humiliating breakup later, Story still had not tasted success, and with a shriveled-up writing career as her latest disappointment, she realized no magic slippers or fairy dust was going to rescue her from her Anti-Midas Touch. No Happily Ever After was coming. So she had learned to find a certain comfort in failure. In addition to her own screw-ups, others’ mistakes became cozy blankets to cuddle, and she snuggled up to famous failures like most people embrace triumph. The Battle of Little Bighorn—a thing of beauty. The Bay of Pigs—delicious debacle. The Y2K Bug—gorgeously disappointing fuck-up. Geraldo’s anti-climactic Al Capone exhumation—oops! Jaws III—heaven on film. Tattooed eyeliner—eyelids everywhere, revolting. Really revolting. Fat-free potato chips—good Lord, makes anyone feel successful. ↗

— Elizabeth Leiknes

#first-sentence #humor #beauty