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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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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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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We can make this country the garden of Eden.
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I like to read dramatic novels and I absolutely love magazines.
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The truth is that politicians are basically tied to trying to get reelected, so they can't really make landmark changes.
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The writing I love has something memorable in it - an image, a smell. It's the connection between the moment and the whole concept, weaving the micro together with the macro so that it has a hold on people - that's writing.
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It's not an easy thing to be let go.
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When people say 'stadium songs,' it's really negative. All the festival headliners, I've realised, are usually the worst bands.
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I mean to say that Congress can hereafter decide whether any states, slave or free, can be framed out of Texas. If they should never be framed out of Texas, they never could be admitted.
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The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
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MMA has the rudest, most negative, dumbest, ignorant fans in the world - but it also has the most passionate fans in the world.
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My father has never once asked me a question, any question. There's a freedom that came from that. It allowed me to create my own way of thinking.
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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.
