Good One Sentence Quotes & Sayings

The first draft of everything, I write longhand. One of the nice things about that is that it makes you keep going. If you write a bad sentence on the computer, then it's very tempting to go back and fidget with it and spend another 20 minutes trying to make it into a good sentence. — Jonathan Dee

When I sit down to write, I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another ... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map. — Melissa Bank

Hope is nice. Fucking useless in this situation, but still nice. You have one sentence before you start bleeding. Make it good. — Lauren Stewart

It's not the length but the quality of life that matters to me. It has always been important to me to write one sentence at a time, to live every day as if it were my last and judge it in those terms, often badly, not because it lacked grand gesture or grand passion but because it failed in the daily virtues of self-discipline, kindness, and laughter. It is love, very ordinary, human love, and not fear, which is the good teacher and the wisest judge. — Jane Rule

We must strive to be like the moon.' An old man in Kabati repeated this sentence often ... the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behavior and to be good to others. [S]he said that people complain when there is too much sun and it gets unbearably hot, and also when it rains too much or when it is cold. But, no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy and appreciates the moon in their own special way. Children watch their shadows and play in its light, people gather at the square to tell stories and dance through the night. A lot of happy things happen when the moon shines. These are some of the reasons why we should want to be like the moon. — Ishmael Beah

SPIKE: Settling down is only good for one kind of man.

JESSE: The p*ssy kind?

SPIKE: Nah, the strong sort. You're a strong man, and you're honest. Never thought I'd think about those two words and you in the same sentence.

JESSE: I couldn't be a big d*ck all my life. — Sam Crescent

When cafe life thrives, talk is a shared limberness of the mind that improves appetite for conversation: an adequate sentence maker is then made good, a good one excellent, an excellent one extraordinary. — Vivian Gornick

Uncertainty is a good thing at the end of a narrative. A simultaneous gain and loss captures the complexity of human existence. The way one sentence follows another, if we pay attention to syntax and rhythm, should express the final effect we want the narrative to have on a reader. — Lee Martin

I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story. — Amy Hempel

In what, then, can those engaged in this kind of warfare place their hope? The Nakano Military School answered this question with a simple sentence: "In secret warfare, there is integrity." And this is right, for integrity is the greatest necessity when a man must deceive not only his enemies but his friends. With integrity - and I include in this sincerity, loyalty, devotion to duty and a sense of morality - one can withstand all hardships and ultimately turn hardship itself into victory. This was the lesson that the instructors at Futamata were constantly trying to instill in us. One of them put it this way: "If you are genuinely pure in spirit, people will respond to you and cooperate with you." This meant to me that so long as I remained pure inside, whatever measures I saw fit to take would eventually redound to the good of my country and my countrymen. — Hiroo Onoda

All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don't keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next, and that narrative - good old-fashioned storytelling - is what should pull your readers along without their noticing the tug. — William Zinsser

Every sentence has its drumbeat. rhythm is one of the most powerful dimensions of language: it separates tribes, united families, soothes children, and shocks us into new awarenesses. Every good writer, marching to his or her own drumbeat, marks out a vibrational field as home territory. The cadences of our sentences carry echos of ancestry and influence as surely as the double helix that orchstrates the life of the body. — Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

If you are stymied as a writer, if it's just not coming together, then take the pressure off and don't feel that you need to write 1,000 words today; just write one really good sentence. — Chris Bohjalian

And because the constitution of a mans Body, is in continuall mutation; it is impossible that all the same things should alwayes cause in him the same Appetites, and aversions; much lesse can all men consent, in the Desire of almost any one and the same Object.
Good Evill
But whatsoever is the object of any mans Appetite or Desire; that is it, which he for his part calleth Good: And the object of his Hate, and Aversion, evill, And of his contempt, Vile, and Inconsiderable. For these words of Good, evill, and Contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: There being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common Rule of Good and evill, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the Person of the man (where there is no Common-wealth;) or, (in a Common-wealth,) From the Person that representeth it; or from an Arbitrator or Judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up, and make his sentence the Rule thereof. — Thomas Hobbes

A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself. — Karen Thompson Walker

I SAY "SORRY" A LOT. When I am running late. When I am navigating the streets of New York. When I interrupt someone. I say, "Sorry, sorry, sorry," in one long stream. The sentence becomes "Sorrysorrysorry" and it's said really fast, as if even the act of apologizing is something to apologize for. But this doesn't mean I am a pushover. It doesn't mean I am afraid of conflict or don't know how to stand up for myself. I am getting to a place right in the middle where I feel good about exactly how much I apologize. It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for. It takes years to find your voice and seize your real estate. I am still learning the right balance. — Amy Poehler

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

It's definitely about the rhythm of the words and how they sound together, writing one sentence and then another and another and cutting something immediately if it doesn't feel true. I come from a family of musicians and - while I have no musical abilities of my own - I think I inherited a good ear. — Mary J. Miller

What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book. — Katy Lederer

The universe was not kind to auggie pullman. what did the little kid ever do to deserve his sentence? what did the parents do? or olivia? she once mentioned that some doctor told her parents that he odds of someone getting the same combination of syndromes that came together to make auggie's face was like one in four million. so doesn't that make the universe a giant lottery, then? you purchase a ticket when you're born. it's all just random whether you get a good ticket or a bad ticket. it's all just luck. — R.J. Palacio

The cosmic conflict between good and evil is joined; chaotic sea and demonic sea monster verses the morally outraged man, Captain Ahab. In this boat, however, there is one man who does nothing. He doesn't hold an oar; he doesn't perspire; he doesn't shout. He is languid in the crash and the cursing. This man is the harpooner, quiet and poised, waiting. And then this sentence: 'To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of his world must start to their feet out of idleness, and not out of toil.' Was this the confirmation to cultivate what I had named an 'unbusy pastor'? — Eugene H. Peterson

Reading is a very strange thing. We get talked to about it and talk explicitly about it in first grade and second grade and third grade, and then it all devolves into interpretation. But if you think about what's going on when you read, you're processing information at an incredible rate.
One measure of how good the writing is is how little effort it requires for the reader to track what's going on. For example, I am not an absolute believer in standard punctuation at all times, but one thing that's often a big shock to my students is that punctuation isn't merely a matter of pacing or how you would read something out loud. These marks are, in fact, cues to the reader for how very quickly to organize the various phrases and clauses of the sentence so the sentence as a whole makes sense. — David Foster Wallace

Isn't one of the first lessons of good elocution that there's nothing one can say in any rambling, sprawling rant that can't, through some effort, be said shorter and better with a little careful editing? Or that, in writing, there's nothing you can describe in any page-filling paragraph that can't be captured better in just a sentence or two? Perhaps even nothing in any sentence which cannot better be refined in a single, spot-on word? Does it not follow, then, that there's likely nothing one can say in any word - in saying anything at all - that, ultimately, isn't better left unsaid?
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) — Mort W. Lumsden

I usually start writing a novel that I then abandon. When I say abandon, I don't think any writer ever abandons anything that they regard as even a half-good sentence. So you recycle. I mean, I can hang on to a sentence for several years and then put it into a book that's completely different from the one it started in. — Kate Atkinson

Good night, Seth."
"So you're running again, then?" One of his boots thudded on the floor.
"I'm not running."
The other boot hit the floor. "Really?"
"Really. It's just - " She stopped; she didn't have anything that would finish that sentence and be honest.
"Maybe you should slow down, so I can catch you." He paused, waiting. — Melissa Marr

I don't have an e-reader. One reason is that I like to dog-ear the page when I find a particularly good sentence or passage. — Carl Hiaasen

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what - these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank. — William Zinsser

John Bunyan: "But one day, as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy righteousness is in heaven; and methought withal, I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, as my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was adoing, mGod could not say of me, He wants my righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 35-36) — John Bunyan

A good game has to have a fun core, which is a one-sentence description of why it's fun. — Paul Reiche III

Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice. — Barbara Tuchman

How do you get the happy ending? John Irving ought to know. One of my favorite authors, Irving writes these multigenerational epics of fiction that somehow work out in the end. How does he do it? He says, 'I always begin with the last sentence ; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.' Thst sounds like a lot of work, especially compared to the fantasy that great writers sit down and just go where the story takes them. Irving lets us know that good stories and happy endings are more intentional than that.
Most 20 something's can't write the last sentence of their lives. But when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their 30s or 40s or 60s -or things they don't want- and work backward from there. This is how you have your own multigenerational epic with a happy ending. This is how you live your life in real time. — Meg Jay

Cut in dressmaking is like grammar in language. A good design should be like a well made sentence and it should only express one idea at a time, — Charles James

They left. Among the many dumb rules of paragraphing foisted on students in composition courses is the one that says that a paragraph may not consist of a single sentence. Wilkerson ends a richly descriptive introductory chapter with a paragraph composed of exactly two syllables. The abrupt ending and the expanse of blankness at the bottom of the page mirror the finality of the decision to move and the uncertainty of the life that lay ahead. Good writing finishes strong. — Steven Pinker

Write one good clean sentence and put a period at the end of it. Then write another one. — M.F.K. Fisher

It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that you knew or had seen or had heard someone say. — Ernest Hemingway,

In England on a hot day, women are happy to walk around with their bra straps showing. In Paris, they don't shave their armpits. And you just can't mention Germany and style in the same book, let alone the same sentence. It's the same story in America too, where the Farrah Fawcett haido of 1975 still reigns supreme. In Italy, even the policemenists look like they've just come off a catwalk. One I found, standing on a rostrum in the middle of a Roman square, was immaculate, as was his routine. Each wave of the hand, each toot of the whistle and each twist of the body was Pans People perfect. Never mind that the traffic was completely ignoring him, he looked good, and that's what mattered. Looking good in Italy is even more important than looking where you're going. — Jeremy Clarkson

Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other. — Michel De Montaigne

We are just good friends. This sentence is enough to destroy at least one person. — Sarvesh Jain

Simon did everything inexpertly. He was really good at it. He was one of those tall lads apparently made out of knees, thumbs and elbows. Watching him walk was a strain, you kept waiting for the strings to snap, and when he talked the spasm of agony on his face if he spotted an S or W looming ahead in the sentence made people instinctively say them for him. It was worth it for the grateful look which spread across his acned face like sunrise on the moon. — Anonymous

To engage the written word means to follow a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying, inference-making and reasoning. It means to uncover lies, confusions, and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another. To accomplish this, one must achieve a certain distance from the words themselves, which is, in fact, encouraged by the isolated and impersonal text. That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too detached. — Neil Postman

What I love about lyrics is that they don't have to be very complicated. A good sentence over a great chord with a good melody - all you need is that one moment. — Jason Schwartzman

Trying to provoke him into a terrifying sentence, I said: The only definitive thing is death. Yes, he said, but it isn't easy to get there when one's condition is as good as yours. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I want to see all oppressed people throughout the world free. And the only way we can do this is by moving toward a revolutionary society where the needs and wishes of all people can be respected.' With these words the radical philosophy professor Angela Davis paraphrases Isaiah's ancient messianic dream of the lion that will peacefully lie down with the lamb in a completely good world. But what the Biblical prophet perhaps could not know is contained with a clarity that leaves nothing to be desired in the opening sentence of an address of the French Senate to Napoleon I: Sire, the desire for perfection is one of the worst maladies that can affect the human mind. — Paul Watzlawick

A good magic effect should easily be described in one sentence. — Dai Vernon

The best sentence a man can say to a woman is "I want to meet your parents" or "You will be a good mother one day". — Yuli Pritania

The most important sentence in a good book is the first one; it will contain the organic seed from which all that follows will grow. — Paul Horgan