“They WERE walking alongside the road, they WERE hit by a car, and now they ARE dead. It doesn't work. Are is present tense. Dead is -- well, dead is past, isn't it? Present tense modifying past; being modifying non-being. Language, in this instance" -- and here Miriam makes a garbled noise in her throat-- "fails.”
Myla Goldberg
Bee Season
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Similar quotes
“But why would it matter? We aren't ... or...uh...weren't ..." Which is it, Jess? "Aren't" or "weren't"? Present or past tense? Now or then? "We haven't been talking to each other." Past imperfect tense. How appropriate.”
Megan McCafferty
Second Helpings
“I ride the singular point of the present until the future is past tense.”
Rashaad Bell
“...I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense.”
Mary Doria Russell
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“Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.”
John Green
The Fault in Our Stars
“The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living.”
W.H. Auden