Nouns Quotes

“Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

“What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender.”

“The keeping of lists was for November an exercise kin to repeating of a rosary. She considered it neither obsessive nor compulsive, but a ritual, an essential ordering of the world into tall, thin jars containing perfect nouns. Enough nouns connected one to the other create a verb, and verbs had created everything, had skittered across the face of the void like pebbles across a frozen pond. She had not created a verb herself, but the cherry-wood cabinet in the hall contained book after book, jar after jar, vessel upon vessel, all brown as branches, and she had faith.”

“Poetry is all nouns and verbs.”

“Poetry is all nouns and verbs.”

“I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.”

“In a world full of nouns, be a verb.”

“His sentences didn't seem to have any verbs, which was par for a politician. All nouns, no action. ”

“The Psalms wrap nouns and verbs around our pain better than any other book.”