Quote

Very is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of I love you very much or the heart-slamming intensity of I love you?

Florence King

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Florence King
Age: 80 †
Born: 1936
Born: January 5
Died: 2016
Died: January 6
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Washington
District of Columbia
Florence Virginia King
Love
Rather
Strengthen
Language
Intended
Come
Intensity
Mincing
Writing
Useless
Slamming
Heart
English
Shallowness
Much
Example
Weakens
Always
Hear
Treacherous
Would
Word
Invariably

More quotes by Florence King

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Real feminism is spinsterhood. It's time America admitted that old maids give all women a good name.
Florence King
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Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.
Florence King
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A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt.
Florence King
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In its purest sense, nicknaming is an elitist ritual practiced by those who cherish hierarchy. For preppies it's a smoke signal that allows Bunny to tell Pooky that they belong to the same tribe, while among the good old boys it serves the cause of masculine dominance by identifying Bear and Wrecker as Alpha males.
Florence King
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Familiarity breeds democracry.
Florence King
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Families composed of rugged individualists have to do things obliquely.
Florence King
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The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmoth.
Florence King
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Now the only thing I miss about sex is the cigarette afterward. Next to the first one in the morning, it's the best one of all. It tasted so good that even if I had been frigid I would have pretended otherwise just to be able to smoke it.
Florence King
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Randian heroes come off as metaphors for Jews because they are beset by irrational forces that try to bar them from the professions and use their virtues against them to bring about their destruction.
Florence King
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He travels fastest who travels alone, and that goes double for she. Real feminism is spinsterhood.
Florence King
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Let's bring back grandmothers! A real family consists of three generations. It's time Americans stopped worrying about interference and being a burden on the children and regrouped under one roof.
Florence King
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Each time a mediocre singer performs, he is saying, in effect, This is good enough for you. The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattention, rudeness and noise.
Florence King
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If you ever meet someone who cannot understand why solitary confinement is considered punishment, you have met a misanthrope.
Florence King
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to a Southerner it is faux pas, not sins, that matter in this world.
Florence King
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Gradually my whole concept of time changed until I thought of a month as having twenty-five days of humanness and five others when I might just as well have been an animal in a steel trap.
Florence King
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It takes only one child to raze a village.
Florence King
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There's something unrefined about a reading woman, they always reek of the lamp. How can she grow up to be a lady if she's always got her nose in a book? Granny Rudin
Florence King
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Showing up at school already able to read is like showing up at the undertaker's already embalmed: people start worrying about being put out of their jobs.
Florence King
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In other countries, congenital introverts simply remain introverts all their lives, neither advancing nor retreating, but America's commitment to extroversion as a national art form can abrade some naturally aloof personalities until they flower into deadly nightshade.
Florence King
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Insecurity breeds treachery: if you are kind to people who hate themselves, they will hate you as well.
Florence King