William Safire Quotes

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.

Semicolons . . . signal, rather than shout, a relationship. . . . A semicolon is a compliment from the writer to the reader. It says: "I don't have to draw you a picture; a hint will do."

Grammar is the analysis of language.

Grammar is the grave of letters.

Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.

A sentence is made up of words, a statement is made in words.... Statements are made, words or sentences are used.

I once asked him what came at the end of the sentence... and he said "parole".

A period may be defined as a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and an end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at a glance

Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don't you find?

There are a lot of other things besides nouns.

The only man, woman, or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors "is dead."

That's crazy, because I had no idea what the word 'contraction' meant before I saw it on the Internet.

Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

She was born in the Objective case.

Nothing fortuitous happens in a child's world. There are no accidents. Everything is connected with everything else and everything can be explained by everything else. . . . For a young child everything that happens is a necessity.

Make no a complete sentence.

Human, Allen, is an adjective, and its use as a noun is in itself regrettable.

I never actually learned the rules of grammar, relying instead only on what sounded right.

There is nothing that pleases me more than a beautiful sentence ... It is something that satisfies me.

It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.

The obvious liberal rejoinders come to mind: What about the child whose home is hit by a bomb? Did she have some bomb-shaped thoughtform that brought ruin down on her head? And did my [fired white-collar workers] boot-camp mates cause the layoffs that drove them out of their jobs by "vibrating" at a layoff-related frequency? It seems inexcusably cruel to tell people who have reach some kind of personal nadir that their probem is entirely of their own making.

I have made the cause of children and families really my life's work.

The same fire that cooks a meal for us may burn a child, and it is no fault of the fire if it does so; the difference lies in the way in which it is used.