Stanley Fish - Sentences Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

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What we know of the world comes to us through words, or, to look at it from the other direction, when we write a sentence, we create a world, which is not the world, but the world as is appears within a dimension of assessment.

Stanley Fish
Just as you can practice three - word sentences or sentences that travel across time zones, so can you practice writing sentences that breathe unshakable conviction.

Stanley Fish
Know what makes a sentence more than a random list, practice constructing sentences and explaining what you have done, and you will know how to make sentences forever and you will know too when what you are writing doesn't make the grade because it has degenerated into a mere pile of discrete items.

Stanley Fish
Sentence writers are not copyists; they are selectors.

Stanley Fish
We marvel at [good sentences]; we read them aloud to our friends and spouses, even, occasionally, to passersby; we analyze them; we lament our inability to match them.

Stanley Fish
The category of first sentence makes sense only if it is looking forward to the development of thematic concerns it perhaps only dimly foreshadows.

Stanley Fish
They are their own monuments, as is this quietly thrilling sentence.

Stanley Fish
People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved.

Stanley Fish
The word "essay" means to try out, test, probe. In the essay style, successive clauses and sentences are not produced by an overarching logic, but by association; the impression that prose gives is that it can go anywhere in a manner wholly unpredictable.

Stanley Fish
Sentences can save us. Who could ask for anything more?

Stanley Fish