Quotes About Language

While I was doing Hindi, people there laughed at me because I couldn't speak Hindi and English properly.

I know just enough Japanese to get by if I get lost and greet an audience properly, just from having a lot of Japanese friends and being there over the years.

I'm not against profanity. It's an important part of the language when used properly.

I used to go to a Gaelic class on a Saturday morning, but I never felt myself that I could speak it properly.

My mum won't speak to me unless I speak properly on the phone. I have to speak 'American' for work, so often the accent comes through when I'm not at work.

I'd love to master another language properly.

I love the English language, but I'm crap at it, so I might as well do what I'm good at. The same goes for my kids, who are also dyslexic. I won't pressure them to do anything. They've each got a trust and a mortgage-free property, which is a lot more than I had, so I know they will always be fine.

The natural world is often bleak, but the language devoted to it is as careful as needlepoint and prophetic as well.

In Israel, the role of the writer is dictated by the language in which you write. Writers see themselves as cultural prophets.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Cliches and adjectives permeated my prose.

If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.

Prose is all about embellishing and describing.

My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy.

I want my prose to be as clear as a pane of glass.

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

'At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom' by Amy Hempel showed me the lean quality of prose.

In prose, I think you sometimes have to write in very plain language, where every line may not seem to be so important, though in all writing every line is important.

I think poetry should be read very much like prose, except that the line breaks should be acknowledged somehow.

Adverbs lead to overwriting. Try taking them out and reading your prose again to see how it sounds. Simple and less words are more powerful.

Prose is not so dependent on sound. The line of poetry, with the breaking of the line - to me, sound is the kind of doorway into poetry. And my sense of sound, or my ability to control it, lapsed or grew less.

If you are an autodidact, you probably do write more in the rhythm of speech rather than having learnt prose.

The way we speak is very different from the way we write - especially from the way we write continuous prose.

From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.