Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.
Lynne TrussRead
All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.
Interpretation
Protect your creative work until it is complete to avoid discouragement.
Lynne Truss emphasizes the importance of keeping your creative endeavors private until they are fully developed. Sharing early ideas can lead to external criticism or doubt, which may undermine your confidence and motivation, potentially derailing your project altogether.
In practice
A writer may use this quote to encourage fellow authors at a workshop.
Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.
In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.
Most fools think they are only ignorant.
We cannot choose how many years we will live, but we can choose how much life those years will have. We cannot control the beauty of our face, but we can control the expression on it. We cannot control life's difficult moments but we can choose to make life less difficult. We cannot control the negative atmosphere of the world, but we can control the atmosphere of our minds. Too often we try to choose and control things we cannot. Too seldom we choose to control what we can ... our attitude.
Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain.
Because men have a history, it is difficult for them to imagine what it is like to grow up without one, or the sense of personal expansion that comes from discovering that we women have a worthy heritage. Along with pride often comes rage – rage that one has been deprived of such a significant knowledge.
Nobody likes to fail but failure is an essential part of life and of learning. If your uniform isn't dirty, you haven't been in the game.
Whoever admits that he is too busy to improve his methods, has acknowledged himself to be at the end of his rope. And that is always the saddest predicament which any one can get into.
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