First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life.

Rhythm is so basic to language that it does not need to be taught.

Birdwatchers swear they can spot a bird from its jizz. The word’s origins are unknown, but some think it derives from aircraft reconnaissance in wartime and is short for ‘general impression, size and shape’. A bird’s jizz means that a skilled birder can tell you the breed even if it is just a blur flying past in the dusk. A writer’s voice is like t

I write maybe three and a half thousand sentences a year.

A lamp am I, aware of your joy in bed: Do what you will, not one word will be said.

sentence, too, should rely more on quality ingredients than baroque artifice.

Letter-carvers had once been seen as artists, like painters and sculptors, but now they were looked on as mere artisans, like printers. Writers, meanwhile, had come to be seen as intellectuals or creative people, working with the mind, not as scribes, working with the hands.

Having only minor gifts has its compensations. It has forced me to think hard about how words join up and why some sentences work better than others. A nightingale has no idea why such a bewitching noise emerges from its throat; a human nightingale impersonator must parse every note.

Ageing is a privilege, not a predicament.

the English sentence belongs to everyone, not just those who like to police other people’s use of it.