Quotes About Language

I feel certain that words can be as human as people, alive with the breath of compassion.

I realized Grant would not say kaddish for her, so I did, for the next year. As I was reciting the words, which were nonsense to me, day after day, just rhythmic syllables, I began to realize I needed to learn Hebrew. It was maddening and embarrassing that I had no idea at all what I was saying every day, facing east and thinking of my mother whose face I would never see again except in dreams -- in dreams again and again.

It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.

I call it Negroland because I still find "Negro" a word of wonders, glorious and terrible. A word for runaway slave posters and civil rights proclamations; for social constructs and street corner flaunts. A tonal-language word whose meaning shifts as setting and context shift, as history twists, lurches, advances, and stagnates. As capital letters appear to enhance its dignity; as other nomenclatures

Dialogue is a wolf in sheep's clothing—often pretending to be woolly and vague, actually all teeth and meaning. Even

I've forgotten the words with which to tell you. I knew them once, but I've forgotten them, and now I'm talking to you without them.

The words emerge from her body without her realizing it, as if she were being visited by the memory of a language long forsaken.

She would hang a sign in the restaurant window--Owt to luntsch. Bee bak in a whale. For she could not spell either.

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions. On the other hand, but more slowly, life has thrown light for me on the meaning of books.

When it comes to fantasy formations, it is therefore essential to distinguish between (1) unconscious fantasies that curb our existential options and (2) imaginative and creative fantasies that allow us to observe the world from novel angles. Lacan's assault on narcissistic fantasies is directed at the former, whereas his commentary on the poetic potentialities of language could be argued to relate to the latter.

On this view, it is not only how we die—or face the prospect of our mortality, as phenomenologists like to say—but also how we inhabit language that singularizes us, that gives our identities a distinctive resonance.

In this manner, language becomes a medium that allows the conscious and unconscious realms to come together in a fluid manner. From this viewpoint, self-stories are effective not so much because they help us make sense of our lives, but because they give us access to the spirited liveliness of language. Indeed, to the extent that our identities are tied to discursive structures, it could be argued that the mobility of language is directly linked to the flexibility of being.

Side note: invalid. Whoever invented that word, and made it the same word as not-valid? That person sucked.

I think of the note. I want to say me too. I want to say I know. I want to say I can read the gaps in your sentences. I can read the space between your letters. I know your language. It's my language too. I want to say that.

For years, I thought that if I had to be a palindrome, make me kuulilennuteetunneliluuk.

Let him grow up, I was thinking the whole time. That's an old prayer. It comes in every language.

Like everyone who's ever translated this text, I had some fun.

The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!

There is in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!

Dante gives excellent advice to teachers when he says, "Let thy words be counted." The more carefully we cut away useless words, the more perfect will become the lesson. And

Storytelling draws on the magic of language to created Elsewheres. Writers use a linguistic sleight-of-hand to take an attribute, attach them to new objects, and create enchantment.

The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.

Philosophy is one of the ways to use complicated sentences to explain simple concepts.

Poetry is all nouns and verbs.