A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
William Strunk, Jr.

A significant number of pages and sentences that the administration wants to keep in a classified status have already been released publicly, some of it by public statements of the leadership of the CIA and the FBI.
Bob Graham

All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Charles A. Beard

America has the longest prison sentences in the West, yet the only condition long sentences demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.
Bruce Jackson

Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.
Wolcott Gibbs

But if you know that something has been really vicious, you don't read it, you don't let it into your head. What's damaging is when sentences go through your head and you burn with the injustice of it.
Nigella Lawson

But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes.
Polly Toynbee

Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
Jean Rostand

Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one.
Herbert Bayard Swope

Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.
William Kingdon Clifford

For some people, their idea of getting tough is longer suspended sentences.
Jeremy Larner

I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences.
Miguel de Cervantes

I can't tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading a lot of stories that I admired and just working and working until the sentences sounded right and I was satisfied with them.
Jhumpa Lahiri

I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.
John Irving

I have two books that were published quite some time ago. I start to read about three sentences. I have to close it. I am so self-conscious. Who did I think I was?
Patty Duke

I like the construction of sentences and the juxtaposition of words-not just how they sound or what they mean, but even what they look like.
Don DeLillo

I mean people just have a way of - y'know they'll review your record in two sentences and put you in this little stupid box that you don't want to be in.
Elliott Smith

I refuse to imprison our acts in the rigid mould of sentences.
Ella Maillart

I sum up the prospects for 1967 in three short sentences. We are back on course. The ship is picking up speed. The economy is moving. Every seaman knows the command at such a moment: 'steady as she goes'.
James Callaghan

I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences.
Roger Zelazny