"Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. "
— Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex)

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
— James D. Nicoll

"Of course, it is boring to read about boring thing, but it is better to read something that makes you yawn with boredom than something that will make you weep uncontrollably, pound your fists against the floor, and leave tearstains all over your pillowcase, sheets, and boomerang collection."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
— Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley)

"Summer afternoon... to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."
— Henry James

"The hallway was lined with numbered doors, odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other, and large ornamental vases, too large to hold flowers and too small to hold spies."
— Lemony Snicket (The Penultimate Peril)

"What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone."
— Alexander Poe

"In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language."
— Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)

"An English gentleman never shines his shoes, but then nor does a lazy bastard."
— Will Self (Dorian: An Imitation)

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
— James D. Nichols

"What is now proved was once only imagined."
— William Blake

"Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.


"
— Andrew Marvell

"What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?"
— Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation)

"Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall."
— Joseph Conrad

". . . Nature pulls one way and human nature another."
— E.M. Forster (Howards End)

"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window though which you see the whole world."
— George Bernard Shaw

"Mr Bennet in Pride & Prejudice,
This is an evening of wonders, indeed!"
— Jane Austen

"Bicky rocked, like a jelly in a high wind."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler."
— Izaak Walton (The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation)

"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?"
— Clarence Darrow

"So the books for the Englishman, as he listened intently or not, had
gaps of plot like sections of a road washed out by storms, missing
incidents as if locusts had consumed a section of tapestry, as if
plaster loosened by the bombing had fallen away from a mural at night."
— Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient)

"some trillions of years ago a sloppy, dirty giant flicked grease from his fingers. One of those gobs of grease is our universe on its way to the floor. Splat!"
— Brion Gysin

"Man is a bad animal"
— Brion Gysin

"I guess that isn't the right word," she said. She was used to apologizing for her use of language. She had been encouraged to do a lot of that in school. Most white people in Midland City were insecure when they spoke, so they kept their sentences short and their words simple, in order to keep embarrassing mistakes to a minimum. Dwayne certainly did that. Patty certainly did that.
This was because their English teachers would wince and cover their ears and give them flunking grades and so on whenever they failed to speak like English aristocrats before the First World War. Also: they were told that they were unworthy to speak or write their language if they couldn't love or understand incomprehensible novels and poems and plays about people long ago and far away, such as Ivanhoe."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions)

"I did best when I had least truth for my subjects."
— John Donne (The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne)

"In this point at least, the poor are far more philosophic than the rich -- that they show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediable evils, or irreparable losses. "
— Thomas DeQuincey

"Беше времето на небесната война."
...
"Нейният баща и беше разправял за ръцете. И за кучешките лапи. Винаги, когато оставаше насаме с някое куче, той се навеждаше и помирисваше кожата на стъпалата му. "Тази миризма - обичаше да казва, сякаш описваше аромата на глътка бренди - е най-великата на света! Букет! Полъх от грандиозни пътешествия." Тя се преструваше на погнусена, но кучешката лапа си оставаше едно чудо - никога не лъхаше на мръсотия. "Като катедрала! - бе възкликнал баща й. - Може би лъх от тази или онази градина, от зелена поляна или от цикламена леха - досущ смес-концентрат от всички обходени през дена пътеки."
...
"Спалните бяха притихнали като тъмни джобове на златен костюм."
...
"На зазоряване, когато се промъкваше вкъщи, тя го намираше заспал в креслото на баща й, изтощен от професионални и лични грабежи. Тя мислешеза Караваджо. Има такива хора, просто трябва да се вкопчиш в тях, да се впиеш в плътта им, за да не полудееш в тяхната компания."
...
"В Канада пианото не може без вода. Отваря се капакът и се оставя чша вода. След месец чашата е празна."
...
"В пустинята водата е обичана като жена - изтичащ между пръстите лазур, чийто капки галят гърлото като звуци от любимо име. Поглъщаш нечие отсъствие. На жена. В Кайро. Бели, протяжни извивки на надигащо се от леглото тяло - тя се надвесва през прозореца и дъждът попива в голата й плът."
...
"Тя го мразеше, когато говореше така. Тогава погледът й ставаше любезен, а вътрешно изпитваше желание да го зашлеви. Винаги бе искала да го зашлеви и осъзнаваше сексуалността на този акт."
...
"Красивите песни на вярата пронизват въздуха като стрели, минаретата разговарят, сякаш разнасят слуха за любовниците, които вървят в студения утринен въздух, наситен с миризмата на дървени въглища и хашиш. Грешници в свещен град."
...
"От този миг нататък, бе му пошушнала тя преди, или ще намерим душите си, или ще ги изгубим."
...
"Как се случи това? Да се влюбя и да се разчленя.
Бях в ръцете й. Бях дръпнал ръкава на ризата до рамото, за да ивдя белега от ваксина. Обичам го, казах. Този блед ореол на нейната ръка. Виждам как спринцовката чертае драскотина. Пробив - и срумът прониква. Това се е случилоотдавна, когато е била на девет години, в салона за физкултура.""
— Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient)

"He that climbs the tall tree has won right to the fruit, He that leaps the wide gulf should prevail in his suit.
"
— Walter Scott

"Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.
"
— Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger)

"Think of my Pleasure in Solitude, in comparison of my commerce with the world - there I am a child - there they do not know me not even my most intimate acquaintance - I give into their feelings as though I were refraining from irritating a little child - Some think me middling, others silly, other foolish - every one thinks he sees my weak side against my will; when in thruth it is with my will - I am content to be thought all this because I have in my own breast so graet a resource. This is one great reason why they like me so; because they can all show to advantage in a room, and eclipese from a certain tact one who is reckoned to be a good Poet - I hope I am not here playing tricks 'to make the angels weep': I think not: for I have not the least contempt for my species; and though it may sound paradoxical: my greatest elevations of Soul leave me every time more humbled - Enough of this - though in your Love for me you will not think it enough."
— John Keats

"In high school, we barely brushed against Ogden Nash, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, or any of the other so-unserious writers who delight everyone they touch. This was, after all, a very expensive and important school. Instead, I was force-fed a few of Shakespeare's Greatest Hits, although the English needed translation, the broad comedy and wrenching drama were lost, and none of the magnificently dirty jokes were ever explained. (Incidentally, Romeo and Juliet, fully appreciated, might be banned in some U.S. states.) This was the Concordance again, and little more. So we'd read all the lines aloud, resign ourselves to a ponderous struggle, and soon give up the plot completely."
— Bob Harris (Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!)

"Learning is doing a famous person"
— Mr.Chaney

"you must learn to live as I do - in the face of constant criticism, opposition and censure. That, sir, is the English way."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange Y El Senor Norrel)

"The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience."
— Chinua Achebe (Morning yet on creation day: Essays)

"They bade each other goodbye and returned to their homes where they would drink a cup of English tea even though they were quite aware that no such thing as a tea tree grew in England and later that night before they went to bed they would drink a cup of English cocoa even though they were quite aware that no such thing as a cocoa tree grew in England."
— Jamaica Kincaid (Autobiography of My Mother)

"They bade each other goodbye and returned to their homes, where they would drink a cup of English tea, even though they were quite aware that no such thing as a tea tree grew in England, and later that night, before they went to bed, they would drink a cup of English cocoa, even though they were quite aware that no such thing as a cocoa tree grew in England."
— Jamaica Kincaid (Autobiography of My Mother)

"There are those that make things happen. There are those that watch things happen. There are those who wonder what happened."
— Mrs. Butler