Joe Moran > Quotes

“Having only minor gifts has its compensations”
― Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing . . . and Life

“To clothe despair in eloquence is to show that it can be endured.”
― Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life.

“Sentences are our writing commons, the shared ground where every writer walks.”
― Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life

“The act is its own reward; do not expect applause. You must be willing to keep writing in the absence of any evidence that anyone is reading. And no use complaining, either, since no one asked you to do it in the first place. The rewards of writing sentences are real, but they are long-deferred and mostly unconfirmed.”
― Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life

“In a fast world in pursuit of instant answers, slowness has become a dissident act. Perhaps a sentence slowly written, and slowly relished, could work in the same way, as a last redoubt against the glib articulacy of a distracted age.”
― Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life.

“But so much writing is just ambient word static, typographic white noise. Picture your sentence up in lights, a stack of words staring straight back at you, demanding thought, and it focuses the mind.”
― Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life.

“Every year, more than 120,000 new books are published in Britain, creating millions of volumes that will never be opened, let alone read. Many of these unread books are shredded into tiny fibre pellets called bitumen modifier, which can beused to make roads, holding the blacktop in place and doubling up as a sound absorber. A mile of motorway consumes about 50,000 books. The M6 Toll Road used up two-and-a-half million old Mills and Boon novels, romantic dreams crushed daily by juggernauts...Having your unread books vanish into the authorless anonymity of a road feels pleasingly melancholic, like having your ashes scattered in a vast ocean.”
― Joe Moran, On Roads

“Write unto others as they would unto you.

(Reader consideration)”
― Joe Moran

“Easy listening is hard(work) singing, easy reading is hard(work) writing”
― Joe Moran

“Jansson’s lesson is not that shy people should come out of their shells; it is that they should learn to become non-neurotic introverts. For Moomins may sulk and skulk fleetingly, but most of the time they are neither needy nor neurotic. Their response to a problem is to think deeply and then make something – a hut, a painting, a poem, a boat carved out of bark – as a way of whittling meaning out of a terrifying world.”
― Joe Moran, Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness

“Transitive verbs have the most heat because the verb acts on an object. We lit a fire. A notch down the dial come the intransitive verbs, which do not need an object to act on. We met. I sneezed. He flinched. Linking verbs like look, feel and seem have even less heat. To be is the coldest of all.”
― Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing . . . and Life

“Poetic emotion, resonance and power is in the vowels/vowel sounds”
― Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life

“Speech is more intimate in its syntax than writing. It has shorter clauses and more no-content words to link these clauses up. Writing is denser, with longer clauses and more content words. Speech is simple words in complex sentences; writing is complex words in simple sentences.”
― Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life

“من تصمیم گرفتم که بپذیرم، به قول توسعه‌دهنده‌های نرم‌افزار، که خجالتی بودن یه ویژگیه نه یه باگ.”
― Joe Moran, Shrinking Violets: A Field Guide to Shyness

“ناراحتی ناشی از خجالتی‌بودن یه مسئله واقعیه و کمک به دیگران برای رفع این ناراحتی یه هدف شرافتمندانه است. ولی مصرف دارو برای اضطراب اجتماعی - برای این احساس که احمق، کسالت آور یا دوست نداشتنی هستیم - مثل فریاد زدن در باد یا جلوی باران ایستادن می‌مونه. مثل این می‌مونه که بخواهید برای زنده‌بودن درمانی پیدا کنید.”
― Joe Moran, Shrinking Violets: A Field Guide to Shyness

“هیچ‌کس شما رو به خاطر این که خجالتی به نظر نمی‌رسید تشویق نمی‌کنه، احتمالاً به خاطر این که اونا بیشتر نگران این هستند که خودشون هم همین‌طور دیده شوند.”
― Joe Moran, Shrinking Violets: A Field Guide to Shyness

“هیچ‌کس شما رو به خاطر این که خجالتی به نظر نمی‌رسید تشویق نمی‌کنه، احتمالاً به خاطر این که اونا بیشتر نگران این هستند که خودشون هم اینجوری دیده شوند.”
― Joe Moran, Shrinking Violets: A Field Guide to Shyness

“Well into his thirties he dreamed of having to go to school as a grown-up, opening his desk, and rummaging inside to hide his face, “suffering over again with increased intensity the shyness and sense of disgrace of my boyhood.” And yet Wallace came to be grateful for what he called his “constitutional shyness,” which he felt had given him long periods of solitary study and a hesitancy over words that led him to avoid the verbosity that marred so many scholarly works.”
― Joe Moran, Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness

“Good writing is the combination of a cold clinical eye and an open heart.”
― joe moran

“Writing is a journey into sound, not excision.”
― Joe Moran