Subordinate Clauses Quotes & Sayings

What the hell's wrong with mimosas?' Aphrodite was saying. 'Orange juice is for breakfast.'
'What about the champagne part? That's alcohol,' Stevie Rae said.
'It's pink Veuve Clicquot. That means its good champagne, which cancels out the alcohol part, — P.C. Cast

A very long sentence, anchored in solid nouns, with countless subordinate clauses, scores of adjectives and adverbs, and bold conjunctions that launched the sentence in a new direction
besides unexpected interludes
has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end. — Yann Martel

It's not just a question of doing what you love for a living. It's about doing what you love with love. Then your life and all be transformed. — Rasheed Ogunlaru

The alternative, should you, or any writer of English, choose to employ it (and who is to stop you?) is, by use of subordinate clause upon subordinate clause, which itself may be subordinated to those clauses that have gone before or after, to construct a sentence of such labyrinthine grammatical complexity that, like Theseus before you when he searched the dark Minoan mazes for that monstrous monster, half bull and half man, or rather half woman for it had been conceived from, or in, Pasiphae, herself within a Daedalian contraption of perverted invention, you must unravel a ball of grammatical yarn lest you wander for ever, amazed in the maze, searching through dark eternity for a full stop. — Mark Forsyth

There was a time, usually late in August, when summer struck the trees with dazzling power and they were rich with leaves but then became, suddenly one day, strangely still, as if in expectation and at that moment aware. They knew. Everything knew, the beetles, the frogs, the crows solemnly walking across the lawn. The sun was at its zenith and embraced the world, but it was ending, all that one loved was at risk. — James Salter

Because there's no pain yet. There's too much adrenalin and rhetoric in his bloodstream. There's whole chunky paragraphs of What it Means to King and Country. Never mind God. There's fine speeches still pumping up along his arteries, principal and subordinate clauses, the adjectival, the adverbial, in gorgeous Latinate construction and hot breath. It's the Age of Speeches. There's exclamation marks doing needle dancing in his brain, and so he gets twenty yards into the war. — Niall Williams

Are you dying?"
Cato lit his cigarette. "It's not acute, perhaps, but we're all dying, Harry. — Jo Nesbo

Heart pounding, he collapsed on top of her, claiming her lips with his as he did so, making love to her mouth with his tongue as his spent c#ck continued to spasm inside her p#ssy. Wanting to give her pleasure even as the steel left his length.
She wrapped her arms around his back, tangling her legs with his as she returned his kiss. The pulsing pressure of her fading orgasm on his dick was an unbearable caress he would willingly endure until the end of time. An affirmation of the pleasure he gave her.
A confirmation of what his heart had been telling him since he'd first laid eyes on her: he was hers. Irrevocably and unquestionably. — Lexxie Couper

will not hold ourselves bound to obey the laws in which we have no voice of representation. — Howard Zinn

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they'll never let her get away.
From, The Joy of Writing, Wislawa Szymborska — Wislawa Szymborska

Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren't so many of them left. Think it over ... no more syphilis, no more clap, no more typhoid ... antibiotics have taken half the tragedy out of medicine. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience. — Chuck Palahniuk

We were contracted to make a soundtrack album but there really wasn't enough new material in the movie to make a new record that I thought was interesting. — Roger Waters

From self-assertion, and therefore he is distinguished; — Lao-Tzu

I know my limitations. I know I'm not perfect. I know what I know, but more importantly, I know what I don't know. When I don't know something, I surround myself with people I can trust to teach me. — Brock Lesnar

[Did you] ever know a sincere emotion to express itself in a subordinate clause? — Dorothy L. Sayers

The prospect of his future life stretched before him like a sentence; not a prison sentence, but a long-winded sentence with a lot of unnecessary subordinate clauses, — Margaret Atwood

Well, Espen, you're no drug addict, so why do you beg?"
"Because it's my mission to be mirror for mankind so that they can see which actions are great and which are small."
"And which are great?"
Espen sighed in despair, as though weary of repeating the obvious. "Charity. Sharing and helping your neighbor. The Bible deals with nothing else. In fact, you have to search extremely hard to find anything about sex before marriage, abortion, homosexuality, or a woman's right to speak in public. But, of course, it is easier for Pharisees to talk aloud about subordinate clauses than to describe and perform the great actions the Bible leaves us in no doubt about: You have to give half of what you own to someone who has nothing. Thousands of people are dying every day without hearing the words of God because these Christians will not let go of their earthly goods. I'm giving them a chance to reflect. — Jo Nesbo

That day of wrath, that dreadful day. When heaven and earth shall pass away. — Walter Scott

The lady in the latrine, Julie DuBois, and I were on our first date after three weeks of shameless flirting. I'm about forty, Julie's about thirty - a PhD in English lit, a professor at American University, learned, tenured, brilliant, blonde, blue-eyed - and, not that it matters, also quite attractive. I had been looking forward to this date for a week; I really wanted to get Julie's take on Marcel Proust's persistent use of subordinate clauses, a literary mystery I can never seem to get out of my mind - and yes, Julie was having trouble believing that, too. But men who date women for their looks alone are pigs. — Brian Haig

And as a Christian, I got something the world didn't give me, the world can't take away, so I find joy that can never be reduced to anything. — Cornel West

You know, sex at seventy-six is getting very dangerous for my health ... since I live at seventy-nine! — Kensington Gore

And then he has nothing to do. After three weeks-or is it a lifetime?-of ceaseless activity, he has nothing to do. A very long sentence, anchored in solid nouns, with countless subordinate clauses, scores of adjectives and adverbs, and bold conjunctions that launched the sentence in a new direction-besides unexpected interludes-has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end. For an hour or so, sitting outside on the landing at the top of the stairs, nursing a coffee, tired, a little relieved, a little worried, he contemplates that full stop. What will the next sentence bring? — Yann Martel