Style Topics

What is the gay life style? Short hair? Minimalist decor? We can’t simply be talking sex acts here, can we? Because if we are, that would mean that the heterosexual life style would consist largely of the missionary position. That doesn’t entirely conform to my view of the heterosexual life style, which consists largely of folding towels, calling out for pizza and fighting over the remote for the TV.
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)

His style is eminently colloquial, and no wonder it is strange to meet with in a book. It is not literary or classical; it has not the music of poetry, nor the pomp of philosophy, but the rhythms and cadences of conversation endlessly repeated.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

If thou survive my well-contented day
When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover;
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be outstripped by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
Oh, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought—
\‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died, and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.’
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)