Semicolons And Quotes

#1. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses.

George Eliot

#2. Writing is new, relatively speaking. Story telling is ancient. Tell your story first putting aside all other worries. Leave fretting over homonyms, semicolons, and Oxford commas to editors and friends you can be bribe with baking.

Ada Maria Soto

#3. He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James.
"No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader.

George Eliot

#4. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than have syntax. Or semicolons. I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after "semicolons," and another one after "now." And

Ursula K. Le Guin

#5. I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after 'semicolons,' and another one after 'now.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#6. Pretentious and over-active semicolons have reached epidemic proportions in the world of academe, where they are used to gloss over imprecise thought.

Lynne Truss

#7. In her autobiographical Giving Up the Ghost (2003), Hilary Mantel reveals: I have always been addicted to something or other, usually something there's no support group for. Semicolons, for instance, I can never give up for more than two hundred words at a time.

Lynne Truss

#8. I have been told that the dying words of one famous 20th-century writer were, I should have used fewer semicolons

Lynne Truss

#9. Great. They fucked with my punctuation?" "Pam says you're overly fond of semicolons.

M. Pierce

#10. Prices of semicolons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty points off the TomJones Index.

Jasper Fforde

#11. Lust fades after climax, love lasts until breakfast!

Tom Conrad

#12. I'm afraid our old world has come to an end, Rilla. We've got to face the fact. (Walter)

L.M. Montgomery

#13. To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph-mere stops.

Margaret Fuller

#14. Even that was all consumed after two days, and the patients had to try to choke down fresh fish, just boiled in water, without salt, pepper or butter; mutton, beef, and potatoes without the faintest seasoning.

Nellie Bly

#15. All right. Talk to me darlin'. You're not insane. A little crazy, but not insane. And this ... everything you've gotten ... in the last few days ... do you know how many people would kill for this?"
"But ...

Shelly Laurenston

#16. How come you never use semicolons?" she'll say. Or: "How come you chop it all up into little sections instead of letting it flow and flow?" That sort of thing.

Kurt Vonnegut

#17. I hope that my ideas attract a lively dialogue, even if my sentences are simple. Simple sentences have always served me well. And I don't use semicolons. It's hard to read anyway, especially for high school kids. Also, I avoid irony, too. I don't like people saying one thing and meaning the other.

Kurt Vonnegut

#18. The dash helps to indicate that the two thoughts are intimately related, and it's less stodgy than a semicolon, which would have performed the same function (and who talks in semicolons?).

Bill Walsh

#19. In the long sentences of the president's message, semicolons followed by "yet" or "but" separated clauses that balanced each side of an issue, reflecting Roosevelt's characteristic "on the one hand, on the other" style of crediting antagonistic views.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

#20. But in any situation with long love, I don't think it ever goes away fully. You just sort of learn where to keep it.

Justin Vernon

#21. I remember the rule for semicolons; the sentences on both sides have to be full ones.

Hugh Howey

#22. No one knows what they are anymore," he says. "If you're not in the habit of reading nineteenth-century novels, you think that the author has killed a fruit fly directly above a comma - semicolons have become nothing but a distraction.

John Irving

#23. I am gennerally understood tho I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons etc.

John Clare

#24. The one critisism the author of Slaugherhouse-Five would make of the young writer was what he called a punctuation problem. Mr. Vonnegut didn't like all the semicolons. 'People will probably figure out that you went to college
you don't have to try to prove it to them,' he told Danny.

John Irving

#25. The Scriptures show numerous instances when gospel truths are brought out in different orders, argued for using different premises, and applied to hearts in distinctive ways. It is clear that Paul does not feel an obligation to give the whole gospel picture to his audience in one sitting.

Timothy Keller

#26. If colons and semicolons give themselves airs and graces, at least they also confer airs and graces that the language would be lost without.

Lynne Truss

#27. Let me note that Kilgore Trout and I have never used semicolons. They don't do anything, don't suggest anything. They are transvestite hermaphrodites.

Kurt Vonnegut

#28. Maximum sentence length: seventeen words. Minimum:one No semicolons. Semicolons indicate relationships that only idiots need defined by punctuation. Besides, they are ugly. Make sure each sentence is at least four words longer or shorter than the one before it.

Richard Hugo

#29. You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life.

George Bernard Shaw

#30. True love is felonious ... You take someone's breath away ... You rob them of the ability to utter a single word ... You steal a heart.

Jodi Picoult

#31. Semicolons ... signal, rather than shout, a relationship ... A semicolon is a compliment from the writer to the reader. It says: "I don't have to draw you a picture; a hint will do."

George Will