Lynne Truss Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Lynne Truss's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Writer Lynne Truss's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 64 quotes on this page collected since 1955! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • Manners are about imagination, ultimately. They are about imagining being the other person.

  • Thurber was asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room'?" And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. "This particular comma," Thurber explained, "was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.

    Men   Giving   Answers  
  • 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.

    Drama   Ideas   People  
  • Don't pessimism and caution naturally go hand in hand?

  • 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.

    Views   Causes   Common  
  • Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

  • Nice clothes fall apart. Nice clocks don't work. Bits fall off the nice cooker. It is hard to accept that pricing is unrelated to quality, but it's plainly true. Nowadays, we pay the price that satisfies our particular personality type; and then we live with the painful consequences.

  • Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.

  • 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.

    Hate   Eye   People  
  • The way people behave towards each other is a measure of their value as human beings.

    People   Way   Behave  
  • The reason it's worth standing up for punctuation is not that it's an arbitrary system of notation known only to an over-sensitive elite who have attacks of the vapours when they see it misapplied. The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.

    Arbitrary   Vapour   Way  
    "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, November 6, 2003.
  • It should come as no surprise that writers take an interest in punctuation. I have been told that the dying words of one famous 20th-century writer were, "I should have used fewer semicolons" - and although I have spent months fruitlessly trying to track down the chap responsible, I believe it none the less. If it turns out that no one actually did say this on their deathbed, I shall certainly save it up for my own.

  • My favorite thing in the world is a quiz show, 'University Challenge,' so you can see what kind of sad person I am.

  • Well, start waving and yelling, because it is the so-called Oxford comma and it is a lot more dangerous than its exclusive, ivory-tower moniker might suggest. There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken. Oh, the Oxford comma. Here, in case you don't know what it is yet, is the perennial example, as espoused by Harold Ross: "The flag is red, white, and blue." So what do you think of it? Are you for or against it? Do you hover in between?

    Taken   Thinking   Ivory  
  • 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.

    People   Giving   Horror  
    Interview with Rosanna Greenstreet, www.theguardian.com. August 27, 2010.
  • 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.

  • Many aspects of our screen-bound lives are bad for our social skills simply because we get accustomed to controlling the information that comes in, managing our relationships electronically, deleting stuff that doesn't interest us. We edit the world; we select from menus; we pick and choose; our social 'group' focuses on us and disintegrates without us. This makes it rather confusing for us when we step outdoors and discover that other people's behaviour can't be deleted with a simple one-stroke command or dragged to the trash icon.

    Simple   Skills   Icons  
  • It used to be just CIA agents with ear-pieces who walked round with preoccupied, faraway expressions, and consequently regarded all the little people as irrelevant scum. Now, understandably, it's nearly everybody.

  • 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.

  • The main advantage of working at home is that you get to find out what cats really do all day.

    Home   Cat   Advantage  
  • 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.

    "The joy of text" by Will Self, Lynne Truss, www.theguardian.com. July 4, 2008.
  • 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.

  • To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as "Thank God its Friday" (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a Pavlovian "kill" response in the average stickler.

  • 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?

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

    "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, November 6, 2003.
  • All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.

    Book   People   Giving  
  • Old radio comedy makes me laugh, as well as 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue' and comedians like Paul Merton.

  • Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking.

  • Offence is so easily given. And where the 'minority' issue is involved, the rules seem to shift about: most of the time a person who is female/black/disabled/gay wants this not to be their defining characteristic; you are supposed to be blind to it. But then, on other occasions, you are supposed to observe special sensitivity, or show special respect.

    Gay   Issues   Black  
  • 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.

    Gold   Levels   Sacred  
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 64 quotes from the Writer Lynne Truss, starting from 1955! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!