“In our world," Darija said, throwing aside the chapter she was marking up, "there will be no semicolons.”

“Nora— Forgive me for copyediting, but it must be said—you have raped the semicolon yet again. Stop it. It wasn’t asking for it no matter how it was dressed. If you don’t know how to use punctuation then do away with it altogether, write like Faulkner and we’ll pretend it’s on purpose.”Bite me, Easton, Nora said to herself as she corrected her sexually compromised semicolon in chapter eighteen. Seriously, bite me.”

“Throw aside all hindrances and give up your time to attaining a sound mind”

“What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?”

“PREFACE PROBLEM: Nobody reads prefaces.SOLUTION: Call the preface Chapter 1.NEW PROBLEM CREATED BY SOLUTION: Chapter 1 is boring.RESOLUTION: Throw away Chapter 1 and call Chapter 2 Chapter 1.”

“I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after 'semicolons,' and another one after 'now.”