Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
I spend my days kneeling in the muck of language, feeling around for gooey verbs, nouns, and modifiers that I can squash together to make a blob of a sentence that bears some likeness to reason and sense.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the author's struggle and artistry in crafting meaningful sentences from language elements.
P. J. O'Rourke uses vivid imagery to describe the challenging creative process of writing. He equates the act of writing to kneeling in the 'muck of language', suggesting that constructing sentences is messy yet essential work. The metaphor of 'gooey verbs, nouns, and modifiers' highlights the complexity of language and the effort it takes to combine these elements into coherent thoughts. Ultimately, it portrays writing as a laborious yet rewarding endeavor that seeks to convey reason and sense.
Themes
WritingLanguageCreativityArtistryExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, I used this quote to inspire budding authors to embrace the challenges of crafting their narratives.
More from P. J. O'Rourke
All quotes →Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
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Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.
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Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.
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The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.
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