“The work saved me. I clung to it like flotsam in a boiling sea. It was the only solitary sport that I ever played, or was any good at. It felt natural to sit at my computer and type and type some more. For entire minutes, while writing, I could forget the godawful thing that had happened. I could forget that nothing really mattered anymore. Perhaps, if I set my sights low, I could care again about some small thing. I would type a word. One word. Then another. I started to care about the words, then entire sentences.” IfsWritingCareFeltSportsNaturalForgetHappenedSeaMinutesTypeComputerLowsSightSentencesSavedSolitarySmall ThingsOne WordBoilingFlotsam Book:Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: A Memoir Source: Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: A Memoir
“Journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. You are trained to get rid of anything nonessential. You go in, you start writing your article, assuming a person's going to stop reading the minute you give them a reason. So the trick is: don't give them one.” WantGivingWritingPersonsReasonReadingNextMinutesTaughtAssumingSentencesTricksJournalismArticlesThe Next One Author:Amy Hempel
“People say I talk slowly. I talk in a way sometimes called laconic. The phone rings, I answer, and people ask if they've woken me up. I lose my way in the middle of sentences, leaving people hanging for minutes. I have no control over it. I'll be talking, and will be interested in what I'm saying, but then someone-I'm convinced this what happens-someone-and I wish I knew who, because I would have words for this person-for a short time, borrows my head. Like a battery is borrowed from a calculator to power a remote control, someone, always, is borrowing my head.” PeopleIfsWayPersonsSometimesHappensAsksWishLosesAnswersTalkingMiddleMinutesLeavingPhonesSentencesConvincedRingsMy WayOver ItBorrowedBorrowingShort TimeBatteriesRemote ControlCalculatorsLaconicControl Someone Book:You Shall Know Our Velocity Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all species are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” IfsWorldShouldYearsRunningPurposeSufferingUniverseEvilNaturalAnimalAliveMinutesDyingDesignEvolutionAmountDiseasePropertySpeciesBottomSentencesIndifferenceContemplationDecentTake MeThirstNatural WorldStarvationParasitesGod Delusion Author:Richard Dawkins
“I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.” MeanFactsMinutesStructureSentencesProseControlledMinimalistBaroqueArcaneSentence Structure Author:China Mieville
“The minute a phrase, becomes current, it becomes an apology for not thinking accurately to the end of the sentence.” ThinkingEndsMinutesCurrentsSentencesPhrasesApology Author:Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
“The perfect story is one you can retell in three minutes, and every single sentence is interesting.” StoriesThreePerfectInterestingMinutesSentencesSingle Sentence Author:Malik Bendjelloul
“Four. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.” IfsKnowsWantShouldFirstsImportantIdeasHomeRememberLanguageFiveFourLandMinutesFoolLettersShould HaveSentencesDamnI Want YouEnglish LanguageParagraphFood LoveImportant Words Author:Lyndon B. Johnson
“You get good at being by yourself and you're condemned to a life sentence of solitude. You think, "Wait a minute! I should have been a tap dancer or something". But in my life, I feel like I take my stories to people orally.” PeopleThinkingFeelsShouldHas BeensStoriesWaitingMinutesSolitudeShould HaveSentencesBeing YourselfDancerShould Have BeenTap Dancers Author:Sandra Cisneros
“A lot of the letters that are coming in - a lot of them are queries or comments - are one sentence long... These are from Twitter. And if you look at the nature of those one sentence letters, most of the time it's something that came to somebody's mind - somebody walking down the street had a thought and sent it out. If they thought about it for two minutes they would not have sent it.” IfsMindLooksLongTwoStreetsMinutesWalkingLettersSentencesCommentOne SentenceQueries Author:Noam Chomsky