Quotes About Language

The sentence completes its signification only with its last term.

Il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel.

Les mots sont indépendants, comme les chats, et ils ne font pas ce que vous voulez. Vous avez beau les aimer, les flatter, leur parler doucement, il s'échappent et partent à l'aventure.

J'aimais que les gens écrivent sur les murs, sur les maisons, sur les trottoirs, dans la rue, partout. De toute façon, j'aimais les mots.

Je suis très heureux que tu sois là, dis-je avec le sentiment que mes mots n'étaient pas à la hauteur.

Je choisis des mots simples et concrets... J'essaie de faire des phrases courtes et j'évite les inversions autant que possible. Je ne mets pas un mot très bref à côté d'un mot de plusieurs syllables... Si un mot finit par une consonne, je lui trouve un compagnon qui commence par une voyelle. Et je lis mon texte à voix haute pour entendre comment ça sonne.

une dame a la langue fanée une dame longue plus longue que sa chaise longue et très âgée

Poetic language that knows itself as such doesn't contradict reason. On the contrary, it reminds each speaking subject not to take the narrative of his mind's adventures for the voice of truth. Every speaking subject is the poet of himself and of things. Perversion is produced when the poem is given as something other than a poem, when it wants to be imposed as truth, when it wants to force action.

Rhetoric is perverted poetry.

J'accepte que ce que je dis n'est pas toujours ce qui est entendu et que ce que j'entends n'est pas forcément ce qui est dit.

The word 'slut' (in patois) was repeated over and over, until suddenly I felt as if I were drowning in a well but instead of the well being filled with water it was filled with the word 'slut,' and it was pouring in through my eyes, my ears, my nostrils, my mouth. As if to save myself, I turned to her and said, 'Well, like father like son, like mother like daughter.

For isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

Jack," said Charles, "he's making up words again." "Yes," Jack replied, "but he's getting better at it, don't you think?

Words cannot embody; they can only describe.

Given time, a ship's crew will attach sexual innuendo to anything. It makes their jobs more exciting.

To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.

What can be shown, cannot be said.

THE FATHER: But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here? In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

We all have a world of things inside ourselves and each one of us has his own private world. How can we understand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value that I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself, too.

He hadn't enjoyed school all that much, but they could have warned him that language would prove overtaxing.

People daily speak a quilt of words, and continents and nations and tribes and even enemies dance all over your mouth when you speak. The tongue seems to know no race, no affiliation, no breed, no caste, no order, no genus, no lineage.

No way of knowing how language re-created a family. His own children didn't want to learn Spanish, when he had given everything to learn English.

No one in this dogfight has any illusions: it is all instinct and training. They move like machines. But they never lose their own sense of style. Their own dance moves. They speak the same aerial language.