Quotes About Language

I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives.

I write because I'm in love with language; because I like working for myself, inside my head; and because it's the only way I know to make a stab at answering the never-ending questions of the heart that arise simply from the everyday living of our lives.

Babymetal's music is something that no artist has attempted in the past, uniting people as one by crossing language barriers and national boundaries. It was a huge revelation when we realized that our music has such power.

If somebody wants to book Alec Baldwin on one of our shows, and he wants to come on and talk to our people and say what he wants, I don't care. We would question him on his choice of words.

We spend all our time teaching reading and writing. We spend absolutely no time at all, in most schools, teaching either speaking or, more importantly still, listening.

Estonia maintains a two-language school system. I don't know many countries in the world that provide a system like ours. We are making sure that our Russian-speaking minority feels comfortable and involved in this country.

Remember, the West's rock or pop was created for their languages, not ours.

Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.

The names of common flowers change from decade to decade, so I spent a lot of time with old outdated dictionaries, with awful flower names like 'mouse-eared chickweed.'

It's funny because when I'm outside Australia, I never get to do my Australian accent in anything. It's always a Danish accent or an English accent or an American accent.

When I was a kid, if you didn't speak Irish, you really wanted to. And you played Gaelic games and you didn't pay any attention to what was happening in the outside world, because really, Ireland was the center of the universe. And I don't think that's the case anymore. Although, admittedly, it is the center of the universe.

Poetry is not the language we live in. It's not the language of our day-to-day errand-running and obligation-fulfilling, not the language with which we are asked to justify ourselves to the outside world. It certainly isn't the language to which commercial value has been assigned.

To an outsider, understanding an NFL playbook is like trying to read Japanese.

The experiences and feelings I have are starting to outweigh the words available to explain them.

Every time you learn a new language, your understanding of language overall grows, so every time I would learn new music, my understanding of music would grow because I was taken to an extreme in a different direction, and that was, in effect, carrying over into what I do.

I think, look, you have to be aware of the language, and you have to be aware a little bit of your own biases if you're going to overcome them.

A cliche is like a coin that has been handled too much. Once language has been overly handled, it no longer leaves a clear imprint.

The public talk colloquially, the public's grammar's not perfect. They kid around and I don't think they overly mark me down for that. They just see me as a normal guy.

I meet people overseas that know five languages - that the only language I'm comfortable in is English.

Overseas directors who want to work in Hollywood, the language barrier is not a problem. With the right talent, any director can be successful.

As late as my junior year, I was taking Italian at Duke because I thought I was going to have to go overseas and play. Then I had a great senior year and became a lottery pick.

I believe that 'ego' is much overused term.

I've learned that 'love' is used a lot in the States for everything: 'I love that burger,' 'I love my shoes,' 'I love a friend.' To me, if it's overused, it loses meaning.

Years of experience: People who had ten years of experience did not outperform those with two years of experience. There was no correlation between experience and performance except that those with less than six months' experience with the language used in the exercise did not do as well as the rest of the sample.