Exclamation Points And Quotes & Sayings

Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas
a whole grammar made of light, for words to hard to speak. — Jodi Picoult

Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. — Elmore Leonard

I've always thought of accessories as the exclamation point of a woman's outfit. — Michael Kors

In Gospel grammar, death is not an exclamation point, merely a comma. — Neal A. Maxwell

Exclamation points are the most irritating of all. Look! they say, look at what I just said! How amazing is my thought! It is like being forced to watch someone else's small child jumping up and down crazily in the center of the living room shouting to attract attention. If a sentence really has something of importance to say, something quite remarkable, it doesn't need a mark to point it out. And if it is really, after all, a banal sentence needing more zing, the exclamation point simply emphasizes its banality! — Lewis Thomas

Here is an appropriate use of the exclamation mark:
The last thing he expected when the elevator door opened was the snarling tiger that leapt at him.
"Ahhhhh!"
...
In almost all situations that do not involve immediate physical danger or great surprise, you should think twice before using an exclamation mark. If you have thought twice and the exclamation mark is still there, think about it three times, or however many times it takes until you delete it. — Howard Mittelmark

Maxine will sometimes compliment us on our hair or other aspects of our scruffy appearance. The next day, or even later the same day, she'll send an all-caps e-mail asking why a certain form is not on her desk. This will prompt a peppy reply, one barely stifling a howl of fear:

Hey Maxine!
The document you want was actually put in your in-box yesterday around lunchtime. I also e-mailed it to you and Russell. Let me know if you can't find it!
Thanks!
Laars

P.S. I'm also attaching it again as a Word doc, just in case.

There's so much wrong here: the fake-vague around lunchtime, the nonsensical Thanks, the quasi-casual postscript. The exclamation points look downright psychotic. — Ed Park

She wrote to him fairly regularly, from a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations. — J.D. Salinger

When you see the veins popping out of my neck, that's an exclamation point. — Chelsea Handler

Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. — Elmore Leonard

Mario, I wrote, to give myself courage, had not taken away the world, he had taken away only himself. And you are not a woman of thirty years ago. You are of today, take hold of today, don't regress, don't lose yourself, keep a tight grip. Above all, don't give into distracted or malicious or angry monologues. Eliminate the exclamation points. He's gone, you're still here. You'll no longer enjoy the gleam of his eyes, of his words, but so what? Organize your defenses, preserve your wholeness, don't let yourself break like an ornament, you're not a knickknack, no woman is a knickknack. La femme rompue, ah, rompue, the destroyed woman, destroyed, shit. My job, I thought, is to demonstrate that one can remain healthy. Demonstrate it to myself, no one else. If I am exposed to lizards, I will fight the lizards. If I am exposed to ants, I will fight the ants. If I am exposed to thieves, I will fight the thieves. If I am exposed to myself, I will fight myself. — Elena Ferrante

I bet when all the punctuation marks have a party, they quietly look at exclamation point's wife and think, that poor woman. — Dana Gould

I used to enjoy using dots where they would be least expected, not at the end of a sentence but in the middle, creating the effect ... of a skipped beat. It seemed to me the mind reacted - first! ... in dots, dashes, and exclamation points, then rationalized, drew up a brief, with periods. — Tom Wolfe

What is it with young women and exclamation points and smiley faces! So afraid of appearing somber, always wanting to appear light and happy and sparkling, even when they are dying inside. Not ever being able to escape the mask that smiles. She wants to write, really write someday. But she is not fully formed. So she does not write. Not really. Unless attempting to live is a form of attempting to write. The agony of becoming. This is what she experiences. The young girl. She would like to be someone, anyone else. She wants, vaguely, to be something more than she is. But she does not know what that is, or how one goes about doing such a thing. — Kate Zambreno

It's our work, our job, the most important gig of all: to make a place that belongs to us, a structure composed of our own moral code. Not the code that only echoes imposed cultural values, but the one that tells us on a visceral level what to do. You know what's right for you and what's wrong for you. And that knowing has nothing to do with money or feminism or monogamy or whatever other things you say to yourself when the silent exclamation points are going off in your head. — Cheryl Strayed

A pretty face had been damaged by acne scars and she wore and extra forty pounds on her frame like a threat. Her eyes were dull with anger disguised as apathy. If she kept on her current path, she'd grow into the type of person who fed her kids Doritos for breakfast and purchased angry bumper stickers with lots of exclamation points. But right now, she was just another in a long line of pissed-off small-town girls with a shitty outlook. — Dennis Lehane

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. — F Scott Fitzgerald

It's about running wild in a field of exclamation points chasing question marks — Natasha Tsakos

I look out over my life and see a million question marks with only a few definitive exclamation points. I'm living for the next exclamation. — Christy Hall

I mean, you don't just love people, you must LOVE them with exclamation points. — Ray Bradbury

She thought in exclamation points — L.M. Montgomery

God is not an exclamation point. He is, at his best, a semicolon, connecting people, and generating what Aldous Huxley called "human grace." Somewhere along the way, we've lost sight of this. — Eric Weiner

A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point. Thats basic spelling that every woman ought to know. — Mistinguett

Speak and live in simple sentences. Bring closure
put a period to
those experiences that you don't want to carry on forever and ever. Use commas in those places where you're still growing ... and use exclamation points at the end of every lesson. — Iyanla Vanzant

The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark ... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas - a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak. — Jodi Picoult

If you think reading a book is hard, you should try writing one. Because it's even harder. It's still not as hard as writing a game, though. If you discount the purely visual pop-up parts, a book is made almost entirely of words. As a novelist, you just need to think of a few decent strings of words and then fill the other 98% of the book with more or less random descriptions of things and exclamation points. — Erik Wolpaw

I mention the library only as a last resort. I recommend buying your own books... They can be spiced with underlines, question marks, and exclamation points; they can be thumbed and dog-eared, plucked to their essential core, and annotated so that they become a mirror of yourself. — Kato Lomb

Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark. — Amos Oz

People complain about my exclamation points, but I honestly think that's the way people think. I don't think people think in essays; it's one exclamation point to another. — Tom Wolfe

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke. — Mark Twain

This is what they mean by epiphanies. I am almost thinking in exclamation points. — Claire Hennessy

When speaking aloud, you punctuate constantly - with body language.
Your listener hears commas, dashes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks as you shout, whisper, pause, wave your arms, roll your eyes, wrinkle your brow.
In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear the way you want to be heard. — Russell Baker

Changing the world, one exclamation point at a time. — Jon Glaser

Never use three exclamation points when one will do. — Christine Edwards

F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused. — Chuck Klosterman

The blood pumping through her veins when she landed a vault like that one always felt like exclamation points. — Caela Carter

Men can't use exclamation points in texts... it's weird. We also don't say [stuff] like 'yay'. — Jacinta Howard

But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at you - every time. And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whooping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life. — Mark Twain

Like all planets, I turn in my sleep, I've been doing it
since before I was born.
My body is a nightmare
it hurts me every day.
I've been taught to resent it by boys
trying to forge themselves righteous through conquering.
They knew there was something wrong with me,
it was explained through hands
that spoke only in exclamation points. — Brian Ellis

NO SHORTS or SANDAL!! This for your own protection.
Tomorrow's boot camp will be something SPECIAL! Meet in front of the maintenance shed at the north end of the quad at 10 A.M! Latecomers will be left behind and this is a day you will not want to miss!
- Adara -
I roll my eyes. Besides her overuse of exclamation points and her tendency to yell, the idea that we're doing "something special" in camp tomorrow is not exciting. It's terrifying. — Tera Lynn Childs

I love to accent movement. The eye goes to where the white is - you know, the glove. And the feet, if you're dancing, you can put an exclamation point on your movement if it has a bit of light on it. So I wore the white socks. And for the design of the jacket, I would sit with the people who made the clothes and tell them where I wanted a button or a buckle or a design. — Michael Jackson

Reg coughed repressively.Habit had made of the standard nouns and adjectives in his own vocabulary something merely conventional,like italics or points of exclamation.He sometimes found Laurie's conversation highly obscene,and would have voiced his disapproval to anyone he had liked less. — Mary Renault

Love the overuse of exclamation points!!!! Yes!!! They add a lot of emphasis!!! to what your character is saying!!! — L.R.W. Lee

I will dance a little. I will move with the wind. I will give my body to my love and celebrate that we have substance beyond the idea of ourselves. We can move. We can touch. This is my physical exclamation point. This is how I can awaken my mind to the possibilities in the day. — Mary Anne Radmacher

You can't have many exclamation points left,' thought Anne, 'but no doubt the supply of italics is inexhaustible. — L.M. Montgomery

Note: When reading dry political theory, such as the texts you will find on the following pages, it may be useful to apply the Exclamation Point Test from time to time, to determine if the material you are reading is actually relevant to your life. To apply this test, simply go through the text replacing all the punctuation marks at the ends of the sentences with exclamation points. If the results sound absurd when read aloud, then you know you're wasting your time. — CrimethInc.

Use lots of exclamation points. They love to be overused. — SARK