Stanley Fish

"The word "essay" means to try out, test, probe. In the essay style, successive clauses and sentences are not produced by an overarching logic, but by association; the impression that prose gives is th…"

"Before the words slide into their slots, they are just discrete items, pointing everywhere and nowhere."

"Know what makes a sentence more than a random list, practice constructing sentences and explaining what you have done, and you will know how to make sentences forever and you will know too when what y…"

"The structure of a fully articulated profession is such that those who enter its precincts will find that the basic decisions, about where to look, what to do, and how to do it, have already been made…"

"The category of first sentence makes sense only if it is looking forward to the development of thematic concerns it perhaps only dimly foreshadows."

"Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language cannot be avoided. We cannot choose to distance ou…"

"We marvel at them; we read them aloud to our friends and spouses, even, occasionally, to passersby; we analyze them; we lament our inability to match them."

"No word floats without an anchoring connection within an overall structure."