#sentences

I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead. ↗

— Henry Miller

#henry-miller #first-sentence

All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. ↗

— Charles A. Beard

#dark #destroy #enough #exceedingly #fertilizes

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

— Denis Diderot

#like #memory #nails #our #sentences

I sum up the prospects for 1967 in three short sentences. We are back on course. The ship is picking up speed. The economy is moving. Every seaman knows the command at such a moment: 'steady as she goes'. ↗

— James Callaghan

#command #course #economy #every #goes

But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes. ↗

— Polly Toynbee

#crimes #given #jails #longer #more

In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil. ↗

— Jhumoa Lahiri

#breathe #certain #characters #conveying #enabling

I can't tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading a lot of stories that I admired and just working and working until the sentences sounded right and I was satisfied with them. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#exactly #found #how #i #just

In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#breathe #certain #characters #conveying #enabling

Seated each afternoon in the darkened screening room, Halliday came to recognise the targeted numerals of the Academy leader as sigils preceding the dream state of a film. ↗

— William Gibson

#first-sentences #gibson #dreams

All about us were people. Perhaps a hundred. Men. Experience had taught me that humans were cruelest when segregated by sex, and the cold feeling in the pit of my stomach became led. What had I let myself in for? ↗

— C.S. Friedman

#dark #fear #short-sentences #experience