1. from Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, pg.11
Although such an assertion may seem minimal, it can provide a telling emphasis. Sometimes it is repeated to create an insistence. Among the poorest people on the continent, they were freely loading me up with provisions. I offered my watch in trade. He refused (not altogether convincingly), saying “A gift is a gift.”…His seven children followed along behind me…When I got to the edge of the forest, I took off my watch and handed it to the oldest boy. “This is for your father. Tell him I said a gift is a gift.” -Mark Plotkin, Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice, 1998