“Making my English better is a hard job, a slow job. But it's getting better. Three years ago it would have taken me a half hour to say this sentence.” YearsHardJobsThreeHoursHalfTakenYears AgoSentencesGet BetterThree YearsHalf Hours Author:Goran Visnjic
“Shaw does not merely decorate a proposition, but makes his way from point to point through new and difficult territory. This explains why Shaw must either be taken whole or left alone. He must be disassembled and put together again with nothing left out, under pain of incomprehension; for his politics, his art, and his religion - to say nothing of the shape of his sentences - are unique expressions of this enormously enlarged and yet concentrated consciousness.” WayDoeArtWholePainTogetherLeftDifficultConsciousnessTakenExpressionShapesUniqueSentencesTerritoryPropositionsLeft AloneLeft OutTogether AgainIncomprehension Author:Jacques Barzun
“Back in the twentieth century, we thought that robots would have taken over by this time, and, in a way, they have. But robots as a race have proved disappointing. Instead of getting to boss around underlings made of steel and plastic with circuitry and blinking lights and tank treads, like Rosie the maid on The Jetsons, we humans have outfitted ourselves with robotic external organs. Our iPods dictate what we listen to next, gadgets in our cars tell us which way to go, and smartphones finish our sentences for us. We have become our own robots.” WayHumansMadeLightNextRaceTakenCenturyCarSentencesBossOrgansPlasticSteelRobotsTwentieth CenturyTanksDisappointingMaidsRoboticsIpodsGadgetsSmartphonesRosieWhich Way To Go Author:Mary Norris
“Jail sentences have many functions, but one is surely to send a message about what our society abhors and what it values. This week, the equation was twofold: female infidelity twice as bad as male abuse, the life of a woman half as valuable as that of a man. The killing of the woman taken in adultery has a long history and survives today in many cultures. One of those is our own.” MenLongTodayLawValuesCultureHalfTakenWeekMessagesFemaleAbuseFunctionMalesKillingInjusticeValuableSentencesOur SocietyJailMisogynyInfidelityEquationsAdultery Author:Anna Quindlen
“The way in which the photograph records experience is also different from the way of language. Language makes sense only when it is presented as a sequence of propositions. Meaning is distorted when a word or sentence is, as we say, taken out of context; when a reader or listener is deprived of what was said before, and after. But there is no such thing as a photograph taken out of context, for a photograph does not require one. In fact, the point of photography is to isolate images from context, so as to make them visible in a different way.” WayDoeSaidDifferentFactsLanguageTakenRecordsReaderPhotographyPhotographSentencesMake SenseDifferent WaysVisibleListenersPropositionsSequenceDeprivedOf ContextBefore And After Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“The past gives you no justice. Sentences are passed. But that doesn't mean you get justice. You can stand there forever and rail and say, 'Someone has to pay. I want what was taken from me.' But you're just going to get silence coming back at you. The past doesn't pay. We pay. And we're all free to decide when we've had enough.” WantGivingMeanEnoughPastJusticePaySilenceForeverTakenSentencesComing BackHad EnoughRail Book:After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story Source: After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story
“Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.... storytelling is intrinsic to biological time, which we cannot escape. Life, Pascal said, is like living in a prison from which every day fellow prisoners are taken away to be executed. We are all, like Scheherazade, under sentence of death, and we all think of our lives as narratives, with beginnings, middles and ends.” ThinkingHumansSaidEndsTakenOur LivesBloodHuman NatureBreathsFellowsPrisonSentencesStorytellingNarrativePrisonerCirculationNarrationPascal Author:A. S. Byatt
“And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.” IfsWantWritingFirstsImportantStoriesOrderResponsibilityKnownNovelTakenConnectionsSentencesAlready Taken Author:John Irving