Lynne Truss Quotes

I'm obsessively detail-oriented.

I was a pedantic child. I'd get really annoyed at the logic of small things that don't bother anyone else.

I spend hours mowing the lawn in absolutely straight lines on my tractor. If it's not right, I do it again.

It is exactness I aim at, and would not have the least mistake, if possible, pass to the world. If I have unhappily fallen into any, it is through inadvertency only

When I'm working, I'm insufferable because I get stuck with myself, and suddenly I become obsessive, thinking about how to make something better.

If I had my way, we'd rehearse things to death.

Oh, the secret of a great club is all in the detail. When I walk into one of my bars, I have to have all my napkins a certain way and all the pourers in the bottles facing a certain way. It drives some people crazy, but I figure if I notice something's off, then other people will notice it, too.

The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth, of culmination; its bliss lasts as much as five minutes, until the first typographical error or production flaw is noticed.

As if fixing the little errors would made the big stuff manageable.

I'm psychotically involved in every tiny little aspect. That's just the way I've been about everything my whole life.

You had to get everything exactly right or the editors would give you hell.

a perfectly managed Christmas correct in every detail is, like basted inside seams and letters answered by return, a sure sign of someone who hasn't enough to do.

You need not expect to get your book right the first time.

The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book.

Perfection is a polished collection of errors.

Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not sometimes be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality.

To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story.

When it comes to making an album I take that very seriously. I am meticulous, overworked. That's my time to put everything under the microscope.

Right,' Thomas said. 'Where are we headed?' 'To where they treat me like royalty,' I said. 'We're going to Burger King?' I rubbed the heel of my hand against my forehead and spelled fratricide in a subvocal mutter, but I had to spell out temporary insanity and justifiable homicide, too, before I calmed down enough to speak politely. 'Just take a left and drive. Please.' 'Well,' Thomas said, grinning, 'since you said 'please' - Thomas Raith & Harry Dresden, Small Favor, Jim Butcher

The setting is a worthy one, if the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men.

A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.

I take my work enormously seriously. When I do something, it has to feel right. Everything has to be right. I’m not ambitious about my career, but I am ambitious with each job. I can be fairly annoying to work with. No compromises, let’s put it this way. Compromises are from hell.

Perfection is very difficult to achieve, and perfection was what I wanted in McDonald's. Everything else was secondary for me.

At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so sound before

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.