Better Yet In A Sentence Quotes & Sayings

I think a single sentence by Van Gogh is better than the whole work of all the art critics and art historians put together. — John Olsen

Finally (and here is a sentence I never imagined writing), I thank my conversation partners on Facebook. A couple of years ago, my friend Finn Ryan set up a Facebook author page for me. Grateful as I was, my skepticism about the medium kept me from posting anything there until six months before I finished this book. I am very glad that I took the leap. The folks who share that space with me have helped me refine a number of key ideas, allowing me to write a better book than I could have written alone. Many thanks to all my Facebook "friends" as well as my face-to-face friends. — Parker J. Palmer

My story ended where so many stories have ended since the Rising: with a man - in this case, my adoptive brother and best friend, Shaun - holding a gun to the base of my skull as the virus in my blood betrayed me, transforming me from a thinking human being into something better suited to a horror movie. — Mira Grant

It's true that the hatred is still there. But it doesn't change anything. Our obligations are the same - to live and sanctify all life with our own. To participate in the world the best we know how, leaving it a better place than we found it. To raise families and teach our children to value life. What more can we do? Should we refuse to live because of the threat of death hanging over us? We've always been under sentence of death. Every generation that lives out its days in peace is a victory. Every day we live is a victory. — Ovadya Ben Malka

Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself. — Gail Carson Levine

Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it. Thought, experienced primarily as language, is permeated by the linguistic and perceptual values developed expressly to subordinate women. Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name. No transcendence of the male system is possible as long as men have the power of naming ... As Prometheus stole fire from the gods, so feminists will have to steal the power of naming from men, hopefully to better effect. — Andrea Dworkin

So you and Bridget spent the better part of last night and early morning texting each other questionable messages?" Mom asked.
"I think it's called 'sexting,'" said Dad. It was the worst sentence uttered in the history of my life. — Sarah Skilton

Beautifully written, intensely passionate and gripping, FALLEN grabbed me
from the first sentence and didn't let go. Its eerie future world and
frightening mores provide an unforgettable backdrop to the story of Lilia
Desjardins, the shade-hunter, and fallen-angel turned cop, Adam Montgomery.
It's Matrix, Blade Runner and Terminator rolled into a riveting love story
and made better. Perfect. A must-read by an author who keeps you on the
edge of your seat. — Linnea Sinclair

When you first start writing-and I think it's true for a lot of beginning writers-you're scared to death that if you don't get that sentence right that minute it's never going to show up again. And it isn't. But it doesn't matter-another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it-and fix it again and again and again, and it will be better. — Toni Morrison

The thing about living with a death sentence for so long is you tend to miss the moment life starts to get better because you're so ready for it to get much, much worse. — John Goode

Though I have seldom done anything to my own satisfaction, I am better satisfied with the translation of the New Testament than I ever expected to be. The language is, I believe, simple, plain, intelligible; and I have endeavored, I hope successfully, to make every sentence a faithful representation of the original. — Adoniram Judson

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. — Goran Visnjic

As I do not live in an age when rustling black skirts billow about me, and I do not carry an ebony stick to strike the floor in sharp rebuke, as this is denied me, I rap out a sentence in my note book and feel better. If a grandmother wants to put her foot down, the only safe place to do it these days is in a note book. — Florida Scott-Maxwell

Although I don't use it nearly so much anymore, I've decided, five years down the line, that Mr. Treadstone's verdict on 'kind of' was kind of unjust. Obviously, this phrase can be redundant or reductive, or just plain stupid in some sentences, but not in all sentences. I wouldn't, for example, use a sentence like 'Antarctica is kind of cold', or 'Hitler was kind of evil'. But sometimes, things aren't black and white. And sometimes 'kind of' expresses this better than any other phrase. For example, when I tell you that my mother was kind of peculiar, I can think of no better way of putting this. — Gavin Extence

How can you spend hours every day trying in small ways to figure out who you are, then have a near-stranger give you a sentence of yourself that says it better than you ever could? — David Levithan

I'm the one who started spreading that particular factoid, about Bendis, Azz and me all being bald Brian's from Cleveland, just to get my name mentioned in the same sentence as two much-better writers, and it's worked like a goddamn charm. Next up, I'm going to grow a big, disgusting beard, just so people will start talking about Alan Moore and me in the same breath. — Brian K. Vaughan

And how deeply do I let business considerations affect [screenwriting] choices that might otherwise be more or less esthetic? ... Do I choose the upbeat rather than the downer ending because I know it will score better at the preview? Can the idea be sold in a single sentence? Can it compete with space aliens and tornadoes and missions impossible? — Edward Zwick

I am just getting into Zora Neale Hurston, who is possibly a much better writer than the critics and rivals who tried to erase her from history, resulting in a life in which she worked as a maid and died in a welfare nursing home. She's clever. She does something modern to the sentence. — Rachel Kushner

Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don't try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there's a chance you'll never get past the first chapter. — Iain Banks

There is probably no finer prose writer alive in Britain now, no-one better at making a sentence, no-one better at descriptive writing, no-one who can get so close to the vividness of other peoples interior selves. — Linda Grant

I once knew a fellow who committed robbery with violence, and he was sentenced to a long prison stretch and 12 strokes of the cat. He'd been injured during the robbery, so they put him in hospital to make him better so that they could make him worse. During the administration of the cat, he fainted after six strokes, and the doctor put him in hospital again. And he got very friendly with the nurses and the doctors, and after a while they got him well enough to go back and take the next six strokes. I saw him afterward and I said: "Oh, Jesus - that bloody law, that bloody judge!" But he said: "I don't want the fellow who made the law, and I don't want the fellow who passed the sentence. All I want is the fellow who held the bloody whip. — Peter O'Toole

You may pronounce the sentence upon me, honourable judge, but let the world know that in A.D. 1886, in the State of Illinois, eight men were sentenced to death because they believed in a better future; because they had not lost their faith in the ultimate victory of liberty and justice! — August Spies

Our job is to make change. Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they'd like to go. Every time we waste that opportunity, every page or sentence that doesn't do enough to advance the cause is waste. — Seth Godin

One senses with so many Democrats who support the Clintons an unspoken sentence: "They're all we have." They're the only big national winners the party has left. I always want to say to them: That's not true, you've got better than that, you've got good people, go look and you will find them. — Peggy Noonan

Writing helped to have jobs that involved running around, pushing things like dish carts and wheelbarrows. It would be hard to sit at a desk all day, and then come to sit at another desk. Also, it helps to abandon hope. If I sit at my computer, determined to write a New Yorker story I won't get beyond the first sentence. It's better to put no pressure on it. What would happen if I followed the previous sentence with this one, I'll think. If the eighth draft is torture, the first should be fun. At least if you're writing humor. — David Sedaris

Susan's gotta poker, you know," it said, as if anxious to be helpful.
WELL, WELL. INDEED. MY GOODNESS ME.
"I fort-thought all of you knew that now. Larst-last week she picked up a bogey by its nose."
Death tried to imagine this. He felt sure he'd heard the sentence wrong, but it didn't sound a whole lot better however he rearranged the words. — Terry Pratchett

I think I should learn to get along better with people," he explained to Miss Benson one day, when she came upon him in the corridor of the literature building and asked what he was doing wearing a fraternity pledge pin (wearing it on the chest of the new V-neck pullover in which his mother said he looked so collegiate). Miss Benson's response to his proposed scheme for self-improvement was at once so profound and so simply put that Zuckerman went around for days repeating the simple interrogative sentence to himself; like Of Times and the River, it verified something he had known in his bones all along, but in which he could not placed his faith until it had been articulated by someone of indisputable moral prestige and purity : "Why," Caroline Benson asked the seventeen-year-old boy, "should you want to learn a thing like that? — Philip Roth

The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as you go along. If you try to come back after doing a paragraph and stick them in the various spots that tempt you you will discover that they tend to swarm like minnows into sorts of crevices whose existence you hadn't realized and before you know it the whole long sentence becomes immobilized and lashed up squirming in commas. Better to use them sparingly, and with affection, precisely when the need for each one arises, nicely, by itself. — Lewis Thomas

Writing is better if it's kept simple. Every sentence doesn't need to have perfect noun/verb agreement. I've said 'ain't' on the air. Because I sometimes use 'ain't' when I'm talking. — Stuart Scott

Honestly, Edward." I felt a thrill go through me as I said his name, and I hated it. "I can't keep up with you. I thought you didn't want to be my friend."
"I said it would be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't want to be."
"Oh, thanks, now that's all cleared up." Heavy sarcasm. I realized I had stopped walking again. We were under the shelter of the cafeteria roof now, so I could more easily look at his face. Which certainly didn't help my clarity of thought.
"It would be more ... prudent for you not to be my friend," he explained. "But I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella."
His eyes were gloriously intense as he uttered that last sentence, his voice smoldering. I couldn't remember how to breathe. — Stephenie Meyer