Quotes About Language

88. Like many self-help books, The Deepest Blue is full of horrifyingly simplistic language and some admittedly good advice. Somehow the women in the book all learn to say: That's my depression talking. It's not "me." 89. As if we could scrape the color off the iris and still see. 90.

The point wasn't that if the outer world were schooled appropriately re: the characters' preferred pronouns, everything would be right as rain. Because if the outsiders called the characters "he", it would be a different kind of he. Words change depending on who speaks them; there is no cure.

But why bother with diagnoses at all, if a diagnosis is but a restatement of the problem?

Jag skriver ner allt det här i blått bläck, så att jag ska minnas att alla ord, inte bara vissa, är skrivna i vatten.

It is absurd, Barthes says, to try to flee from language's assertive nature 'adding to each sentence some little phrase of uncertainty, as if anything that came out of language could make language tremble.' My writing is riddled with such tics of uncertainty. I have no excuse or solution, save to allow myself the tremblings, then go back in later and slash them out. In this way I edit myself into a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to me.

Once we name something, you said, we can never see it the same way again. All that is unnameable falls away, gets lost, is murdered. You called this the cookie-cutter function of our minds. You said that you knew this not from shunning language but from immersion in it, on the screen, in conversation, onstage, on the page.

I insisted that words did more than nominate.

I am writing all this down in blue ink, so as to remember that all words, not just some, are written in water.

It is absurd, Barthes says, to try to flee from language's assertive nature by 'adding to each sentence some little phrase of uncertainty, as if anything that came out of language could make language tremble.' My writing is riddled with such tics of uncertainty. I have no excuse or solution, save to allow myself the tremblings, then go back in later and slash them out. In this way I edit myself into a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to me.

It should be noted that the Tuareg do not call themselves Tuareg. Nor do they call themselves the blue people. They call themselves Imohag, which means "free men.

It is absurd, Barthes says, to try to flee from language's assertive nature by "add[ing] to each sentence some little phrase of uncertainty, as if anything that came out of language could make language tremble.

Las palabras no se parecen a las cosas que designan (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

They call to one another in their particular argot: pure Home Counties cut with Teen American. A lot of yips, heys, elongated vowels. They swing bags through the air. Hair is flicked, stroked, tossed. Trousers are worn tight but low; shoes unlaced. The females link arms with their chosen peers; the males perform mock violence upon those they recognize as their tribe.

The words fly out of her mouth, like hornets, words she didn't even know she knew, words that dart and crackle and maim, words that twist and mangle her tongue.

En aquel momento no se lo conté a nadie, ni a mis amigos ni a mi familia: no encontraba la manera de traducir lo sucedido a gramática y sintaxis.

That was sarcasm. I cannot read tea leaves. I mean, not unless someone lines them up in the shapes of letters.)

I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here. I have two names, which meet and part, and I have two languages. I forget which of them I dream in.

The stars had only one task: they taught me how to read. They taught me I had a language in heaven and another language on earth.

I want to find a language that transforms language itself into steel for the spirit--a language to use against these sparkling insects, these jets.

I look out on my language, two days later A short absence is enough for Aeschylus to open the door to peace a short speech is enough for Antonio to incite war A hand of a woman in my hand is enough to embrace my freedom and for the ebb and flow to begin anew in my body (I See my Ghost Coming from a Distance)

he says I am from there, I am from here, but I am neither there nor here. I have two names which meet and part… I have two languages, but I have long forgotten— which is the language of my dreams

Words are a homeland.

Where is my second road to the staircase of expanse? Where is futility? Where is the road to the road? And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present tense, where are we? Our talk a predicate and a subject before the sea, and the elusive foam of speech the dots on the letters, wishing for the present tense a foothold on the pavement …

Thus, lethargic letters, which carry no value when separate, build a house when they come together.