Lynne Truss Quotes
Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.
If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.
The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.
There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and those who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken.
Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.
Old radio comedy makes me laugh, as well as 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue' and comedians like Paul Merton.
Texting is a fundamentally sneaky form of communication, which we should despise, but it is such a boon we don't care. We are all sneaks now.
Texting is a supremely secretive medium of communication - it's like passing a note - and this means we should be very careful what we use it for.
We read privately, mentally listening to the author's voice and translating the writer's thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it.
What one discovers in life, I find, is that one's personality defects don't come and go.
I am not against marriage. I lived with someone for 11 years. But we weren't in love, and I thought that was quite important.
Manners are about imagination, ultimately. They are about imagining being the other person.
What I have always liked about Brighton is its impersonality. Since the 18th century, people have come, used the place and gone home again.
Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.
When you by nature subscribe to the view that everyone except yourself is a berk or a wanker, it is hard to bond with anybody in any rational common cause.
I hate to be treated as if I'm invisible. I get incensed when people talk across me or refuse to catch my eye in a restaurant or shop.
I do needlepoint from kits. I give them as gifts to people in the form of cushion covers and they are often speechless with horror.
Evidently an A level in English is a sacred trust, like something out of "The Lord of the Rings". You must go forth with your A level and protect the English language with your bow of elfin gold.
As with email, the recipient of a texted question seems to have the option to ignore it, while nevertheless saying hello, lovely day, and so on.
My favorite thing in the world is a quiz show, 'University Challenge,' so you can see what kind of sad person I am.
To some people, the fact that I am not married, or don't have children, would be the reason I have written a book on punctuation.
One of the things that all authors of fiction must learn to judge is whether - and in what detail - to describe the face of a character.
The idea of withholding a massive secret is obviously quite exciting to some people. It is also the basis of much classic drama, of course, from Sophocles onwards.
I used to help my dad with a stall selling eggs when I was about 12. People were so hard up they would ask for one egg. But mostly no one came by at all. It was very demoralising.
If we looked inside ourselves and remembered how insignificant we are, just for a couple of minutes a day, respect for other people would be an automatic result.
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?
Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?
The main advantage of working at home is that you get to find out what cats really do all day.
My favorite thing in the world is a quiz show, 'University Challenge, ' so you can see what kind of sad person I am.
Jessie had never heard you could inherit madness. She thought madness was something that just happened to people in Shakespeare when the wind got up.
