Quotes About Language

no point whatsoever meeting catastrophe with reason when what was needed was our prophets deranged and coming towards us wild-eyed and smeared with shit, ringing a bell, seer and sinner at once while speaking some language from the edge of reason whose message would translate into plain words as we're fucked well and truly fucked

Since the beginning of the world, a prayer is a prayer and a curse is a curse-- no matter the people-- no matter the language-- Man has given a thousand different namesto his god, but look into the face of each one-- long enough-- hard enough-- You will find one truth.

My Dad was from Liverpool, and he picked it up in the army. He'd often come out with this stuff.

You can't negate negation so how can being be?

We still couldn't use "ass" any way we pleased. In one script, we had the phrase "up his ass"; Fox censors asked us to change it to "in his ass." That seemed worse, but we did as they asked.

My father has a tendency to start conversations in the middle of sentences. He's also suspicious of anything modern - like nouns.

How come "burbled" gets to be in the Oxford English Dictionary but "tulgy" doesn't? Hm?

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."

The English and German words are almost identical: "tact" and "takt." The cultural definitions, however, are about as similar as if they were "goose down" and "blitzkrieg.

My mom and my dad wanted my brother and I to have a better life, you know, better education, better jobs. It was probably harder, much, much harder, for my parents. When you're a kid, you can learn a language much more easily I learned English in less than a year.

A single metaphor can give birth to love.

However beautiful a song may be, it is just a tune to those who do not understand its meaning.

Although there are those who wish to ban my books because I have used language that is painful, I have chosen to use the language that was spoken during the period, for I refuse to whitewash history. The language was painful and life was painful for many African Americans, including my family. I remember the pain.

One word can sometimes be sharper than a thousand swords

Every word you add dilutes the sentence.

He was creating the first letters of the Slavonic alphabet. He started with rounded letters, but the Slavonic language was so wild that the ink could not hold it, and so he made a second alphabet of barred letters and caged the unruly language in them like a bird.

Now I had to acquire the skill of how to forget things the easiest and the fastest. Dreams are forgotten as soon as you pass through the nearest door. What remains is only the frame. But how to forget the language you dream in and grew up with?

It has been said ever since that the Brankoviches of Erdély count in Tzintzar, lie in Walachian, are silent in Greek, sing hymns in Russian, are cleverest in Turkish and speak their mother tongue --Serbian-- only when they intend to kill.

Reading is really like trying to hit one tossed stone with another; the consonants are the stones, the vowels their velocity.

How easily language makes one remember something that that language neither says nor wants to say and that would never occur to you, no matter what you are told.

Los sueños no habitan una solución lingüística, sino que flotan en un espacio libre, atemporal, y tan pronto se transforman en lengua o escritura, pierden su carácter voluminoso y se estiran en longitud.

Her silence didn't reflect her intelligence level, contrary to the American view that good talkers were smarter.

She didn't mean to be critical, but after the words came from her mouth, they sounded harsh, and she was sorry.

Like his brother, Noa, Yumi thought English was the most important language and America was the best country.