Quotes About Language

There are some beautiful books out there. But the ones that leave me cold are the ones where I feel - it's that postmodern thing - it's more experimentation with language than it is a deep compassionate falling into another human being's experience.

I'm a bit of a melting pot, I try to speak British, but there's some European lilt - a not-so-conventional one because I'm Belgian, from the Flemish part. Dutch was my mother language, and I learned English, and I speak French, too.

New technology creates a new marketplace of words, creating totally new words and changing the meaning and application of existing ones. In doing so, it has a potent opportunity to create new misconceptions and confusion.

Ezra Pound was a crackpot on social and political issues, but he knew what he was talking about in matters of the written language.

I was well read and knew languages, but I didn't want to become Ezra Pound. I wanted to write poetry that people like my parents might respond to.

Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

I think there's a part of my brain where food, language, and memory all intersect, and it's really powerful. I think I'm not alone in this.

Music is the language of the heart, and conservatives always screw it up.

I think we are living in an age where we really need to have bilingual leaders so that we can communicate with our constituents.

It's true that stammerers can become more adept at sentence construction.

I like contemporary, bare-boned writing. I don't like having the language that I barely understand get in the way of me interpreting it over to an audience. It's this barrier that I don't want to have to attack.

No matter how you use it or what context you are using it in, words hurt.

Our language, history, and civilization shine out across every continent.

I love animals, but I don't want to talk to them. I'd rather be able to talk to other people on other continents and understand them.

The word music is a convenient way to talk about what I'm interested in, but actually, in some ways, it's a limitation.

As for the once-revolutionary 'Agon,' after more than half a century, its lessons and revelations have been so absorbed into the language of ballet that it now seems almost conventional.

Whenever I go to Odisha, I make it a point to converse in Odia.

At home we always converse in Oriya.

Many writers today are wanderers. There is not only an unhousedness in language - how to convey, to say nothing of converge - but an unhousedness of place.

The thing that makes me want to write a piece of music is having something to talk about, you know? Something I want to get across. Because I'm a composer, music is my first language, and that's what I reach for when I want to convey something.

I am a better cook than I am an actor. If I have any ego, it's about cooking. I'm one of the best cooks... and I cook in any language.

In my mind, scatological writing is a core of the English canon.

Trying to speak correct English is not easy.