Quotes About Language

Good writing is good conversation, only more so.

Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events, just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.

When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It's nourishing; it's rejuvenating.

All good writers are sensitive to clichés and endeavor to avoid them

I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now; everything seems like going on a mission to a people whose language I don't know.

Aimwell: Then you understand Latin, Mr. Bonniface? Bonniface: Not I, Sir, as the saying is, but he talks it so very fast that I'm sure it must be good.

Each language gives you something different so that's a good enough reason for you to learn it.

But my Arabic is pretty good. It's good enough to have conversations with people, to understand what they say, to understand what they're feeling.

I really dislike it when people talk about "experimental," because any good writer is experimental.

The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.

I am very good with dialects, but the two that I can't do for some reason are the South African and Australian.

If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!

And generally, when people say good night, they keep their tongues to themselves.

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this.

It feels very good to sing in Russian. It feels so good inside my body.

Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do.

George W. Bush is using language that's a mirror image of the language of Osama bin Laden when he says, "We have God on our side. This is the struggle of good against evil."

I mistrust the term graphic novel because it sounds like a good thing to put on a tee-shirt. That's why the French like them.

Accents. I'm very good with accents. I'm exceedingly good.

Good words are better than bad strokes.

If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.

'Good English' is whatever educated people talk so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.

The basis of any independent government is a national language, and we can no longer continue aping our former colonizers ... those who feel they cannot do without English can as well pack up and go.

An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public.