Quotes About Language

If conservation isn't conservative, then words have no meaning at all.

I want to live in Kolkata; I don't want to live in Europe - I can't write there. I write in Bengali, and I need to be surrounded by the Bengali language and culture.

The language surrounding cancer is not language I'm particularly comfortable with.

I think once you understand a language, you understand the culture surrounding it as well.

I like language, words. And I think the survival skills I've developed over the years have added a lot to my perspective.

Bob Dylan enabled rock & roll to grow up and survive. He injected the power of language and ideas into the music.

That poetry survived in its formal agencies finally, and that prose survived to get something said.

When I started going to school, I started getting used to things, like the language. After that, I started adapting to school, friends, and everything. It was really difficult, to start with, but I survived.

In Hebrew, the name Susan means 'graceful lily' - in Khmer, it means 'girl with the bad puns,' and in ancient Aztec, it translates as 'she with the cockerel hair and dirty glasses.'

Being able to incorporate my language into songs is really cool. It's really cool to see that people are susceptible to it. It helps with writing a lot to turn off one language and then go to another.

People who can't speak Russian will be less susceptible to Russian propaganda. But they will also be less susceptible to the poetry of Joseph Brodsky.

In Japanese, sushi does not mean raw fish. It means seasoned rice.

To speak about notation as the only way that you can guarantee structure of course is already very suspect.

The more words we are allowed to take, the freer we become. If our mouth is banned, then we attempt to assert ourselves through gestures, even objects. They are more difficult to interpret, and take time before they arouse suspicion.

I'm always a bit suspicious of writers who have the gift of the gab.

I can speak Hindi, but I can't sustain it over a whole movie.

It really gets my back up when people start using business phrases - 'sustainability,' 'the brand,' etc. - about rugby.

The level of discourse in this country is falling to a depth that cannot be sustained.

The most staggering linguistic turnabout for me is the one that equates green economy with 'sustained economic growth.'

We didn't really swallow much of the Jesus thing, but we got the vocab.

America exports its culture world-wide but with us they don't have to surmount a language barrier, and therefore they swamp us. While other European cultures are protected from erosion by their languages, ours is not.

It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.

A lot of time, I'd spell things in standard English instead of phonetically because I want people to understand what's going on. It's also very lyrical, and the great thing about lyrical prose is even when you're not totally sure of the words, you can be swayed by the musicality of it.

I swear a lot; I always have. So does my husband. Our son, surprisingly, does not swear much at all.