"Root out all the "to be" verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No "It was" or "they are" or "I am." Don't let it be, make it happen."

-- Barbara Kingsolver

#Roots Quotes #Verbs Quotes #Prose Quotes

“I'd like to have two armies: one for display with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their general's bowel movements or their colonel's piles, an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country.”
“War is very uncertain in its results, and often when affairs look most desperate they suddenly assume a more hopeful state.”

Source : "The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade". Book by George Meade, 1913.
“God forbid that Judges upon their oath should make resolutions to enlarge jurisdiction.”
“I was never very mature in my relationships with women. First sign of conflict, I was gone.”

Source : "Take a chance on me" by Harriet Lane, www.theguardian.com. August 3, 2002.
“I saw 'Paranormal Activity' on Halloween with all my friends. It scared me, but it was so much fun.”
“So, my fellow Christians, protest this film if you like, but then how about devoting some energy to fill the vacuum created by your retreat from popular culture.”
“Friendship is inexplicable, it should not be explained if one doesn't want to kill it.”
“The gods have fled, I know. My sense is the gods have always been essentially absent. I do not believe human beings have played games or sports from the beginning merely to summon or to please or to appease the gods. If anthropologists and historians believe that, it is because they believe whatever they have been able to recover about what humankind told the gods humankind was doing. I believe we have played games, and watched games, to imitate the gods, to become godlike in our worship of eachother and, through those moments of transmutation, to know for an instant what the gods know.”

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