Quotes About Paragraphs

#1. Risk is important to me as a writer, reader, and editor. I love stories that take a premise or style that seems unlikely to succeed, whose first paragraphs risk a raised eyebrow or groan, and whose last paragraphs are then all that much sweeter a triumph. Basically, I love being proved wrong.

Caitlin Horrocks

#2. The truth is, you have about three paragraphs in a short story, three pages in a novel, to capture that editor's attention enough for her to finish your story.

Nancy Kress

#3. The supposed right of intolerance is absurd and barbaric. It is the right of the tiger; nay, it is far worse, for tigers do but tear in order to have food, while we rend each other for paragraphs.

Voltaire

#4. Several paragraphs of dense text began to scroll across the screen, an unreadable blur of legalese outlining all the details of enlistment. It would have taken hours to read it all, and then I still probably wouldn't have understood a word of it.

Ernest Cline

#5. It's always the paragraphs I loved most, the ones I tenderly polished and re-read with pride, that my editor will suggest cutting.

Liane Moriarty

#6. Light was everything. Sunshine, windows with the blinds open. Pages with short chapters and lots of white space and
Short.
Paragraphs.
Light was everything.

Matt Haig

#7. There is a big difference between wanting to say you wrote a book, and actually writing one. Many people think they want to write, even though they find crafting sentences and paragraphs unpleasant. They hope there is a way to write without writing. I can tell you with certainty there isn't one.

Scott Berkun

#8. True love was a language, so many looks, touches and one word references that told the other more than full sentences of paragraphs, more than full outpourings of speech.
Our language was extensive and beautiful, and over a joyful lifetime together, we stayed fluent in it.

R.K. Lilley

#9. I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies.

Brendan Gill

#10. Anyone can see that to write Uncle Tom's Cabin on the knee in the kitchen, with constant calls to cooking and other details of housework to punctuate the paragraphs, was a more difficult achievement than to write it at leisure in a quiet room.

Anna Garlin Spencer

#11. If you turned in a paper with writing on it, you were guaranteed a hook from Jake Epping of the LHS English Department, and if the writing was organized into actual paragraphs, you got at least a B-minus.

Stephen King

#12. A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.

James Patterson

#13. Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so paragraphs must fit into another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages.

Winston Churchill

#14. There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore.

Frank McCourt

#15. Books are our best friends we say, so can we call 'Paragraphs' as our 'Just Friends'?

Bhavik Sarkhedi

#16. When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That's bullshit! They're just hiding their bullshit!

Robert McKee

#17. For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.

William H Gass

#18. I'm a pantser. I try to plot. I always try to plot. I end up with a few paragraphs that basically outline the gist of the story.But I never get much beyond that. I get too impatient to write.

Pamela Clare

#19. Like so many aspiring writers who still have boxes of things they've written in their parents' houses, I filled notebooks with half-finished poems and stories and first paragraphs of novels that never got written.

Ally Carter

#20. I must be honest. I can only read so many paragraphs of a New York Times story before I puke.

Rush Limbaugh

#21. and together we pushed through paragraphs, painstakingly sounding out the words, knitting them into human sentences that said very little.

Miranda July

#22. A man who is careful with his palate is not likely to be careless with his paragraphs.

Clifton Fadiman

#23. Come back, paragraphs. America needs you.

Merlin Mann

#24. I'm very aware when I share a stage with other writers that I'm much less driven than they are. I don't wake up in the middle of the night, pregnant with paragraphs. I don't suffer for my text twenty-four hours a day.

Jim Crace

#25. The torment of personal relations. Nothing new there except in the disguise, and in the escape on the wings of adjectives. Sweet to be pierced by daggers at the end of paragraphs.

Elizabeth Hardwick

#26. Others may do as they please, but as for me,' he concluded ferociously, 'I shall never disclose to anybody that an acrobat, a trained bear of the magazines, a juggler of comic paragraphs, is not a priceless pearl of art and philosophy.

Stephen Crane

#27. My imagination thinks in paragraphs.

Paulette L. Jones

#28. I try to use short sentences, short paragraphs and short chapters to keep the reader's interest.

Nelson DeMille

#29. A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory ... dictiona ries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it.

Rumer Godden

#30. How fascinating to a child are words: the shapes, sounds, textures and mysterious meanings of words; the way words link together into elastic patterns called "sentences." And these sentences into paragraphs, and beyond.

Joyce Carol Oates

#31. I'm pretty disciplined to keep the momentum of a story going by writing everyday, even if it's only a couple paragraphs or a page or two.

James Rollins

#32. The particular way he had of structuring his paragraphs, beginning and ending each with a joke that wasn't really a joke, but an insult cloaked in a silken cape.

Hanya Yanagihara

#33. Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.

William Zinsser

#34. Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.

Barrett Wendell

#35. Read the book through, undeterred and undismayed by the paragraphs, footnotes, comments, and references that escape you. If you let yourself get stalled, if you allow yourself to be tripped up by any one of these stumbling blocks, you are lost.

Mortimer J. Adler

#36. Any serious pondering of all of life through the Golden Rule is dangerous for our moral health because it will summon us - I know I feel this way just writing the above paragraphs - to live under the King and as one of his kingdom citizens.

Scot McKnight

#37. As they say, a word to the wise is sufficient. And here I've gone and written five paragraphs.

Orson Scott Card

#38. I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.

William J. Clinton

#39. Improve writing skills: 1. Keep paragraphs short. 2. Use bold and CAPS to make points. 3. Start with a question or short statement. 4. Give me meat in the middle. All meat. 5. Make me smile, think, or act at the end.

Jeffrey Gitomer

#40. Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

Nicholson Baker

#41. I begin by writing paragraphs that don't have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first.

Grace Paley

#42. Writing is the act of creation. Put words on a page, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to seven-book epic fantasy cycles with books so heavy you could choke a hippo. But don't give writing too much power, either. A wizard controls his magic; it doesn't control him.

Chuck Wendig

#43. When I wear high heels I have a great vocabulary and I speak in paragraphs. I'm more eloquent. I plan to wear them more often.

Meg Ryan

#44. An ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word.

Sarah Dessen

#45. He was a man who wrote, who interpreted the world. Wisdom grew out of being handed just the smallest sliver of emotion. A glance could lead to paragraphs of theory.

Michael Ondaatje

#46. On the last day, when the general examination takes place, there will be no question at all on the text of Aristotle, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, or the paragraphs of Justinian. Charity will be the whole syllabus.

Robert Bellarmine

#47. Whenever she opened a scientific book and saw whole paragraphs of incomprehensible words and symbols, she felt a sense of wonder at the great territories of learning that lay beyond her - the sum of so many noble and purposive attempts to make objective sense of the world.

Vikram Seth

#48. Each letter of the alphabet is a steadfast loyal soldier in a great army of words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories. One letter falls, and the entire language falters.

Vera Nazarian

#49. The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.

Rick Moody

#50. In judging other people's work, particularly short stories, I have noticed how novice writers tell the readers everything about their characters in the first paragraphs, disclose their motives, reveal their recent activities and their future intentions.

Ruth Rendell

#51. When I transformed my random and raw words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters, a semblance of order and sanity appeared where there had been only chaos and insanity.

David Sheff

#52. A natural hierarchy is simply an order of increasing wholeness, such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms, or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes part of the whole of the next. In other words, natural hierarchies are composed of holons.

Ken Wilber

#53. There's writing power in one word sentences and one sentence paragraphs. Wise authors use them. -Judith Briles

Judith Briles

#54. I used to write poems more when I was younger, but I haven't in a long time. I just write ideas and paragraphs and go from there.

Kacey Musgraves

#55. Ultimately, whether we are writing posts, paragraphs, essays, arguments, memoirs, monographs or even just the Great American Tweet, writing is and should be a grand adventure.

Constance Hale

#56. It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words.
You bastards, she thought.
You lovely bastards.
Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this.

Markus Zusak

#57. Each character requires different language, and these issues become inseparable. You have all these balls in the air: language, character, narrative. For me, the primary focus must be words, sentences, paragraphs.

Dana Spiotta

#58. With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

James Thurber

#59. Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!

Henry David Thoreau

#60. I am not - thank heavens - one of those 'driven' writers who spend a fortnight buckled with empty fright over an untouched page only to wake at two in the morning feverish with paragraphs.

Jim Crace

#61. A reader's eyes may glaze over after they take in a couple of paragraphs about Canadian tariffs or political developments in Pakistan; a story about the reader himself or his neighbors will be read to the end.

Donald E. Graham

#62. There are writers whose first drafts are so lean, so skimpy, that they must go back and add words, sentences, paragraphs to make their fiction intelligible or interesting. I don't know any of these writers.

Nancy Kress

#63. When you're writing for newspapers you have all these parameters. You can't swear, you have to use short paragraphs, all that. If you stay within those parameters, you have lots of freedom because you're writing for the next day.

Chuck Klosterman

#64. I've always been enchanted by the endings of things. Series finales and sunsets. Last paragraphs and encores. I think for the way they remind me that losing something you love isn't always sad and heartbreaking, but sometimes breathtaking and beautiful.

Beau Taplin

#65. The Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together - with a thin paste of flour and water ... I don't think there has been such an inspired melodist on this earth since Tchaikovsky ... but if you want to speak of a composer, that's another matter.

Leonard Bernstein

#66. I've been lucky. I've met a lot of baseball people, and I've learned to value people who talk - people who talk well and in long sentences and even long paragraphs.

Roger Angell

#67. The written word is the only anchor we have in life. How extraordinary would it be if we had even three or four paragraphs written honestly about their lives by our ancestors?

Randy Wayne White

#68. [A happy ending is] a distribution at the last of prizes, pensions, husbands, wives babies, millions, appended paragraphs, and cheerful remarks.

Henry James

#69. A brief short story may require only a few paragraphs after the climax. On the other hand, in his massive novel 'The World According to Garp,' John Irving's denouement consisted of 10 separate sections, each devoted to an individual character's fate and each almost a story in itself.

Nancy Kress

#70. My favorite books have a personality and complexion as distinctly drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the paragraphs and smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages.

Amos Bronson Alcott

#71. DID YOU KNOW WHETHER OR NOT [SPOILER REDACTED BECAUSE I KNOW PEOPLE WILL READ THIS DISCUSSION GUIDE BEFORE THEY'VE READ THE BOOK, EVEN THOUGH I JUST FORBADE YOU TO DO SO LIKE SIX PARAGRAPHS AGO] WAS INTENTIONAL WHILE YOU WERE WRITING IT?

John Green

#72. Books don't change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences.

John Piper

#73. Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.

Stephen King

#74. Write a word
Put several words together to make a sentence
Put several sentences together to make a paragraph
Put enough paragraphs together and you have a story.

D.B. Macks

#75. The more fiction you read and write, the more you'll find your paragraphs forming on their own.

Stephen King

#76. Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.

Ernest Hemingway,

#77. In the many times I have seen Hillary [Clinton] speak, she never fails to dazzle audiences by speaking in paragraphs, without notes.

Gail Sheehy

#78. As I sat in a small room constructing what seemed to me awkward sentences and paragraphs, McCone was out having exciting adventures.

Marcia Muller

#79. I do so much revising as I go along; I wonder how I could write books if I hadn't grown up in the computer age. I think I'd be a very different writer. I find myself cutting and pasting, changing things around and deleting whole paragraphs constantly.

Megan McCafferty

#80. I do have one very brutal writing ritual. If I'm working in the morning, I don't allow myself a cup of tea until I've written two paragraphs. It's harsh.

Anthony Lane

#81. You know how some people write every day at a certain point? I'm not like that. I carry something around for a long time. I weigh the words and the sentences. I weigh the paragraphs. The process is much more meditative for me.

Jamaica Kincaid

#82. Our patriarchal blessings are paragraphs from the book of our own possibilities.

Karl G. Maeser

#83. In certain books - some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother.

Robert Henri

#84. I never liked writing concluding paragraphs to papers where you just repeat what you've already said with phrases like 'In summation' and 'To conclude'.

Umberto Eco

#85. It's difficult for me to feel that a solid page without the breakups of paragraphs can be interesting. I break mine up perhaps sooner than I should in terms of the usage of the English language.

A.E. Van Vogt

#86. A Hallmark card with paragraphs about my beauty written by a stranger is vaguely depressing.

Emma McLaughlin

#87. You keep working on your piece over and over, trying to get the sections and paragraphs and sentences and the whole just right, but there's a point at which you can tell you've begun hurting the work with your perfectionism. Then you have to release the work to new eyes.

Anne Lamott

#88. It was terrible and awful when someone left you. You could move on, do the best you could, but like Eli had said, an ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have to have the last word.

Sarah Dessen

#89. I have hundreds of Word documents filled with pages of one-liners. If I begin to write a story, or if one of my thoughts leads to more than a couple paragraphs of writing, I'll go into these documents and pull out lines that I think would work with it.

Chelsea Martin

#90. For me, the short story is the depth of a novel, the breadth of a poem, and, as you come to the last few paragraphs, the experience of surprise.

Amy Bloom

#91. I don't begin a novel until I have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of the surrounding final paragraphs, so that in addition to knowing what happens, I know what the voice is.

John Irving

#92. Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged.

Kevin J. Anderson

#93. When you're writing in big block paragraphs, you can afford to have a redundant sentence now and then, but the Twitter format requires concision.

Anthony Marra

#94. Even the greatest stories can be summed up in a few paragraphs. What makes them so much longer, is all the time spent editing.

Jason Mallory

#95. (difficult to make a real confession and show what happened when you're such an egomaniac all you can do is take off on big paragraphs about minor details about yourself and the big sole details about others go sitting and waiting around)

Jack Kerouac

#96. I often found myself curled up at midday on a hard wooden bench, snoring lightly, drooling on the back of my hand, trying to sleep off my exuberance - and then waking to a headache and a bushel of horrible paragraphs. Admittedly,

Michael Paterniti

#97. Prose is like this big block - you write big paragraphs. I feel that when I'm reading and writing, that a prose book is kind of monolithic. But a song is more like a feather or something.

Bill Callahan

#98. When finished writing a post, go back and add bullets, sub heads, spacing; eliminate long paragraphs or sentences.

Michael Hyatt

#99. Sometimes words are not enough. There are some circumstances so utterly wretched that I cannot describe them in sentences or paragraphs or even a whole series of books.

Daniel Handler

#100. My mother had brought me here when I was fifteen, on a Sunday after I'd read Look Homeward, Angel for the first time. She'd loved the novel, memorizing whole paragraphs, and, of course, naming me after the book's main character. It is a novel you have to read as a young person or you don't get it.

Ron Rash