January 2011
22 posts
Grammar.
“Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beaty. When you speak, or read, or write, you can tell if you’ve said or read or written a fine sentence. You can recognise a well-turned phrase or an elegant style. But when you are applying the rules of grammar skillfully, you ascend to another level of the beauty of language. When you use grammar you peel back the layers, to see how it is all put together, see it quite naked, in a way. And that’s where it becomes wonderful, because you say to yourself, “look how well-made this is, how well-constructed it is! How solid and ingenious, rich and subtle!” I get completely carried away just knowing there are words of all different natures, and that you have to know them in order to be able to infer their potential usage and compatibility.”
-Paloma, again, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbury
“The capacity to do harm is often an item of family capital.”
—Paloma, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
“I wouldn’t Seattle for less.”
—BFF Larnie Campbell, on arriving in Washington.
“Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.”
—William Faulkner (via realityintolerant)
“This is the silliest stuff that I ever heard.”
—Hippolyta, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, William Shakespeare
“People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn’t be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd. That might deprive you a few good moments in your childhood but it would save you a considerable amount of time as an adult - not to mention that you’d be spared at least one traumatic experience, i.e. the goldfish bowl.”
—Paloma, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbury
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
—Oscar Wilde
