Stylebook Quotes & Sayings

I nod like a trained puppy, hoping to god I'm not drooling. How am I supposed to go on stage when I can't take my eyes off her?
I think he's comatose. — Cassie Mae

Good writers are avid readers. They have absorbed a vast inventory of words, idioms, constructions, tropes, and rhetorical tricks, and with them a sensitivity to how they mesh and how they clash. This is the elusive "ear" of a skilled writer-the tacit sense of style which every honest stylebook, echoing Wilde, confesses cannot be explicitly taught. Biographers of great authors always try to track down the books their subjects read when they were young, because they know these sources hold the key to their development as writers. — Steven Pinker

In international affairs, you never threaten things you're not prepared to do. — Sandy Berger

Gorilla, a guy who got his name because he's hairy and because his arms are so long his knuckles scrape the floor. He's grinning and moving closer and she's blocked in on all sides by a mass of bodies. I look at her and him. I look at the window. I think back to our date. She can always break his nose if he gets too friendly. I jump through, land on the grass, and turn around. Who am I kidding? I want to see it if she breaks his nose. — Cath Crowley

Me"? I know a lot of "me's," actually, so which one are you? — Aya Nakahara

Upward and Onward — Stephen Zimmer

Perhaps, he would now agree that you should sometimes let people persude you not to do things. — Jane Austen

Our lives feel like these epochs, but really, we are dust in the wind. — Justin Vernon

Some of the bravest and the best men of all the world, certainly in law enforcement, have made their contributions while they were undercover. — Thomas Foran

Dark energy is incredibly strange, but actually it makes sense to me that it went unnoticed, because dark energy has no effect on daily life, or even inside our solar system. — Adam Riess

It was always a mistake, she thought, to dwell on the cause of one's anger. — Alexander McCall Smith

Throughout the journey of my life, I have maintained a strong faith in the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity. I deeply believe in one's own positive will to overcome even the most daunting challenges. — Farrah Fawcett

For me to get an award from the press, I know there's been no favoritism. — Bobby Knight

Photography's ability to blur truth and fiction is one of its most compelling qualities. But when misused ... this ambiguity can have severe, even lethal consequences ... Photography's ambiguity, beautiful in one context, can be devastating in another. — Taryn Simon