So here's what Sergeant Boyce told Mr. Quick in a conversation tape-recorded at Sing Sing: "If you did something, fine, you did it.
I treasure the day I asked my wife, who knew my inner self -- both strengths and faults -- "Blanche, why did you marry me?" She said directly, "Because I knew you'd do something fine".
For me, observing and touching some of the gravestones was a gesture to thank those who had given me the opportunity to do something with my life; and now perhaps I had honored them by doing "something fine" with that opportunity.
As it turns out, Naslund has done something unusually fine -- she's written a drifting, collective portrait of a city in distress.
"I want to become a better writer and performer, and feel like I've done something with my fine arts degree," Ms. Hartsell said.
Laura Abrams, an associate professor of social welfare at the University of California Berkeley, called the decision "horrendous" and "shocking" and pointed out that the judge could have done something else, like fine the mom or amend her custody order.
According to Henry James, his father was determined that all his children should "be something, something unconnected with specific doing, something free and uncommitted, something finer in short than being that, whatever it was".
If you've done something that could get you fined or in jail, own up right away.
It is easy enough for a good writer (and this is very good prose — that "inner wedge of sky" perfectly capturing the living blueness of atmosphere) to do something verbally fine with the extremities of desert.
