Punctuation Marks Quotes

• I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.

  Isaac Marion

  Exclamation Marks, Long, Want

  Isaac Marion (2012). “Warm Bodies: A Novel”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

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• Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.

  Lynne Truss

  Detours, Language, Slow Down

  "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, November 6, 2003.

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• I bet when all the punctuation marks have a party, they quietly look at exclamation point's wife and think, that poor woman.

  Dana Gould

  Party, Thinking, Exclamation Points

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• A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Book, Eye, Eight

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.133, Seven Stories Press

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• The Biblical text does not have punctuation marks like periods and question marks. Where we end sentences is a matter of interpretation.

  Elie Wiesel

  Biblical, Doe, Matter

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• I need an irony punctuation mark for the clueless.

  Gene Weingarten

  Clueless, Needs, Irony

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• [Mary Wortley Montagu] wrote more letters, with fewer punctuation marks, than any Englishwoman of her day; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby, nearly blinded himself in deciphering the two volumes of undated correspondence which were printed in 1810. Two more followed in 1813, after which the gallant Baron either died at his post or was smitten with despair; for sixty-eight cases of letters lay undisturbed ... 'Les morts n'écrivent point,' said Madame de Maintenon hopefully; but of what benefit is this inactivity, when we still continue to receive their letters?

  Agnes Repplier

  Two, Eight, Nephew

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• I had a vision ... of being found on the pavement by some passerby, with a small punctuation mark ending my sentence of life.

  Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Vision, Pavement, Found

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• Suicide is the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Suicide, Careers, Artistic

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.108, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• That's always been Guillermo's preference, is to have as much there practically as is humanly possible, and that digital graphic images are more a punctuation mark than they are a replacement.

  Ron Perlman

  Digital, Replacements, Preference

  Source: collider.com

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• Human beings are like timid punctuation marks sprinkled among the incomprehensible sentences of life.

  Jean Giraudoux

  Sentences, Humans, Human Beings

  Jean Giraudoux (1964). “Three plays”

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• If the semicolon is one of the neglected children in the family of punctuation marks these days, told to stay in its room and entertain itself, because mummy and daddy are busy, the apostrophe is the abused victim.

  John Humphrys

  Children, Daddy, Rooms

  "The end of the line?" by Jon Henley, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2008.

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• The one affectation I have forced on the publisher... are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter.

  Andy Rooney

  Writing, Confusing, Use

  "Years of Minutes: The Best of Rooney from 60 Minutes". Book by Andy Rooney (Foreword, p. 13), 2003.

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• We think that it's the big moments that define our lives-the wedding, the baby, the new house, the dream job. But really, these big moments of happiness are just the punctuation marks of our personal sagas. The narrative is written every day in the small, the simple, and the common. In your tiny choices, in these tiny changes. In the unconsidered. The overlooked. The discarded. The reclaimed.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Happiness, Dream, Baby

  Sarah Ban Breathnach (1999). “Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self”, G K Hall & Company

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• Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.

  Julie Burchill

  Love, Sympathy, Death

  "The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations". Book by Mark Water, p. 111, 2000.

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• Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.

  Haruki Murakami

  Butterfly, Sight, Consciousness

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jun 18, 2015

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• We have one of those conversations where every thing clicks, meshes, corresponds, locks, where even our pauses, even our punctuation marks, seem to be nodding in agreement.

  Nick Hornby

  Agreement, Locks, Nodding

  Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.128, Penguin

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• smoking had come to be an important punctuation mark in the long sentence of a day on the road.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Long, Smoking, Important

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2012). “Thank You for the Light”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• Listen and learn: you need fourteen characters, minimum. Use random letters, not words. Here’s a tip: think of a sentence, and use the first letter in each of those words. Mix it up between upper and lower case. Then pick two numbers that mean something to you – not dates – and stick them somewhere between the letters. Put a punctuation mark at the beginning of the password and then a symbol, like a dollar sign, at the end.

  Julie James

  Character, Mean, Thinking

  Julie James (2012). “About That Night”, p.126, Penguin

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• It (the dash ) is a comfortable punctuation mark since even the most rigorous critic can seldom claim that any particular example of it is a misuse. Its overuse is its greatest danger, and the writer who can't resist dashes may be suspected of uncoordinated thinking.

  Bergen Evans

  Writing, Thinking, Example

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• But phony, Hemingway was not, and poseur he was not. He did not shoot lions and leopards because he was searching for the answer to life. He shot lions and leopards because he bloody well liked to hunt and shoot, and killing was the best punctuation mark at the end of the intricate and fascinating process of hunting.

  Robert Ruark

  Hunting, Leopards, Answers

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• Hope. It's like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It's a fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. And it's the only thing in the world keeping me afloat.

  Tahereh Mafi

  Hope, Rain, Sky

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• I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

  Mario Batali

  Italian, Doors, Expression

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