Geoffrey K. Pullum Quotes
The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.
Quotes to Explore
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I was raised Catholic in Rockford, Illinois. But I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore. Oh God, no.
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You don't implement change easily in Japan unless you explain very clearly why you need to do this change, how you're going to do this change and what's going to be the outcome of this change. If you offset or you forget to explain one of these three steps you're not going to do it.
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The reason we have cancer and heart disease is the same reason you can't get rid of the wear and tear on your tires on your car: as soon as you use them, you are wearing them away. You can't make eternal tires, and it's the same with the human body.
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Find a type of exercise that you love - whether it's dance, soccer, softball, anything - just as long as it keeps you active. If you love it, you'll dedicate yourself to it and stay involved.
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If you don't find time to meditate and get all that negative out, and if you don't have the right people being positive around you, this is a very scary job to have if you don't learn how to control your fear.
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Great events make me quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.
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Totalitarianism is feudalism in the twelfth century sense of the word.
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A civilization, a culture, cannot survive without passion, cannot be saved without passion.
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I can make up stories with the best of them. I've been telling stories since I was a little kid.
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For a production that suggests a mysterious dreamscape, I have a particular affection for the Vivian Beaumont Theater. It is the largest dramatic space available in New York City in terms of plays, although musicals have been done there very successfully as well.
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Many comedians have a dark side that lets them take a negative thing and turn it funny.
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We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.
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All activities and events that a body is to go through are determined at the time of conception.
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The person in New York City is showing too little empathy for the Trump voter. The Trump voter is showing too little empathy for the person who's very worried about the refugee ban. They're not spending enough time with each other to have a meaningful conversation.
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In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.
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I'm fascinated by anything that deals with the unexplained. I love any show that totally makes me want to know more. How did they build these pyramids? Why did they find these carvings that look like spaceships?
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We can make this country the garden of Eden.
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One sees in Latin America, and also elsewhere, among many Catholics a certain schizophrenia between individual and public morality.
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What I do onstage, there's maybe .0001 percent of the population that acts like that. I talk like that because it makes me laugh, and because I know a couple of people that talk like that. They're really that Southern. And they do funny things. I love 'em; they're awesome. They're good people.
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I'm one of the slowest drivers on the road. I mosey along. If you're doing anything too fast, including living life too fast, that creates sudden death. If I have to be somewhere on time, I make sure I leave early enough.
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When a “founding father’s” remarks about “liberty” don’t seem to make sense, substitute the word “property” and they do.
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For some reason, I spent my early thirties reading as much postwar Hungarian fiction as I could get my hands on.
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The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.
