Be Terse Quotes

#1. She's terse. I can be terse. Once, in flight school, I was laconic.

Joss Whedon

#2. When I struggle to be terse, I end by being obscure.

Horace

#3. Mama only snorted. A terse, ironic half laugh, the kind of angry chortle that powered Mama through her daily drudgery, as if it were the exhaust from an internal engine that runs on pure sass.

Stefan Merrill Block

#4. Lily Brown writes with and against things in poems that are coiled up tight as springs (or snakes). A believer in the power of the line, she writes, 'I think the plastics/and sink them' then 'Where is the sand/man hiding the dirt.' These terse, biting poems will make you look around and wonder.

Rae Armantrout

#5. This saying is both true and terse:
There's nothing bad but might be worse.

Thornton Burgess

#6. As I was leaving graduate school in 1974, I was recruited to join a fledgling SETI project at the Hat Creek Observatory in California, mainly because I knew how to program an ancient PDP8/S computer that had been donated to the project.

Jill Tarter

#7. The grown-ups snapped the chillies (each made a sound terse as a satirical retort), and scattered the tiny, deadly seeds in their food.

Amit Chaudhuri

#8. I have always believed that somehow the less we reveal the more the other desires to see.

Annette Messager

#9. Oh, innocent victims of Cupid, remember this terse little verse: To let a fool kiss you is stupid. To let a kiss fool you is worse.

Yip Harburg

#10. What began with exuberance and passion always ended with terse accusations and hateful words, with rage and weeping fits.

Khaled Hosseini

#11. They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business.

Herman Melville

#12. Philologically, the word Kodak is as meaningless as a child's first goo. Terse, abrupt to the point of rudeness, literally bitten off by firm and unyielding consonants at both ends, it snaps like a camera shutter in your face. What more would one ask. (Explaining why he named his company Kodak.)

George Eastman

#13. But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

George Eliot

#14. Much modern prose is praised for its terseness, its scrupulous avoidance of curlicue, etcetera. But I don't feel the deeper rhythm there. I don't think these writers are being terse out of choice. I think they are being terse because it's the only way they can write.

Martin Amis

#15. Imagine the wars we would've avoided if prior generations had a website where they could debate tragedy and politics in terse sentences?

Eugene Mirman

#16. [B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.

Alan Bennett

#17. She's not the one I want." His words came out terse. "It's you. It's been you since ... since the minute I first saw you.

C.C. Hunter

#18. And then it happens, the most dreaded response in the world, more terse than any word, more withholding than a "no," and strictly verboten for someone as in love with language and me as you claim to be.

You: "K

Caroline Kepnes

#19. Wise Bear said something in his own language, mouth twisting in disgust as if the words stained his tongue. He caught Vaelin's enquiring gaze and provided a terse translation, "Cat People.

Anthony Ryan

#20. In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, but westward, look, the land is bright.

Arthur Hugh Clough

#21. His kisses to her neck were growing hungry and her insides were heating up,but she managed to mutter a terse,I would rather eat my own eyeballs than sit at the table with those bastards.

Laura Wright

#22. In the advanced practice, the relationship between the Zen master and the student becomes very terse. The Zen master will expect things of the student because the student is in graduate school.

Frederick Lenz

#23. The worst thing about being concise with people is the game of puzzle you've made them play.

Michael Bassey Johnson

#24. So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

Cy Coleman

#25. I'm afraid my vagina does not understand tonight's mission.

Krista Ritchie

#26. As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects - digitize and dematerialize - we approach a 'Star Trek' future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles.

James Wolcott

#27. Whatever man uses without the fear of God, whatever he applies to the mere gratifying of his flesh, cannot fail to operate as a poison to the soul, however pleasant and salutary it may appear to be to the body.

Johann Arndt

#28. Bismillah." Then he picked up his fork. "That's it?" Hollis wondered. "That's it. We are a terse people. Terse, and also hungry.

John Green

#29. The text message she'd received last night from the unknown number left her sick inside. It had been curt and to the point: Stay away from my husband. The terse message came with a photo of Gabe with a pretty brunette.

Lena Hart

#30. Ian did, with a blackened eye, skinned knuckles, and the terse report that Manfred had declared a set intention of going off and hanging himself, and good riddance to the fornicating son of a bitch, and might his rotten bowels gush forth like Judas Iscariot's, the traitorous, stinking wee turd.

Diana Gabaldon

#31. Imagine if one of them were turned. Imagine if one could be bought.'
'But they're chosen just so's they can't be bought ... '
'History ... ' Jacobs spoke with terse authority. Brought Ori to a hush. 'Is all full. And dripping. With the corpses. Of them who trusted the incorruptible.

China Mieville

#32. The French, than whom - it's a very than-whom people all round - none can be more vacuously orotund, are (the same ones) obligingly terse. On occasion.

Nicolas Freeling