Quotes About Language

No one ever asks about the language.

Her mastery of the language was a blissful expression of the spirit to her, like playing a musical instrument.

The Doppler Effect of Communication": There is always distortion between what a speaker says and what a listener wants it to mean. "The

you became an expert on silence?' she joked. 'I'm not an expert on anything. but I love language in all forms - sounds and words, facial expressions, hand gestures, body posture and its rhythms, what people mean but don't necessarily say with words. I've always loved words, the power of them.' 'so what's your favorite word?' 'hm, that's an excellent question.' he fell quiet, stroking his beard in thought.

Japanese chase-away juice." And

I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from a man's and for which man's language was so inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored.

words carry colors and sounds into the flesh

I always run away from the simplest phrases because they never contain all of the truth. To me the truth is something which cannot be told in a few words, and those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.

I will cover the walls with words. It will be la chambre des mots.

Didn't the old man know how words carry colors and sounds into the flesh

She is suspicious of words. She lives by her senses, by her intuition. We don't have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds. How are you going to tell about them?

I stress the expansion and elaboration of language. In simplifying it, reducing it, we reduce the power of our expression and our power to communicate. Standardization, the use of worn-out formulas, impedes communication because it does not match the subtlety of our minds or emotions, the multimedia of our unconscious life.

You know, Lillian, someday I will sit down and write a little dictionary for you, a little Chinese dictionary. In it I will put down all the interpretations of what is said to you, the right interpretation, that is: the one that is not meant to injure, not meant to humiliate or accuse or doubt. And whenever something is said to you, you will look in my little dictionary to make sure, before you get desperate, that you have understood what is said to you.

Later he´ll be drunk in extremis and will only be able to speak the esperanto of alcoholics, which is a language full of stutterings from the geological layers of our animal ancestors

I have come to the conclusion that the use and knowledge of words acts sometimes as a stumbling block rather than a clarifier.

I thought of my difficulties with writing, my struggles to articulate feelings not easily expressed. Of my struggles to find a language for intuition, feelings, instincts which are, in themselves, elusive, subtle, and wordless.

But I also hate Nietzsche. I wish you would tell me something that would make me understand him. I began with Zarathustra—fatuous language, and the world full of "tougher and merrier" men!

She wanted to be courted with mysterious language.

One thing about American liberality, obscenity, etc. Just saw a book of Hemingway's—short stories—Winner Takes Nothing. He says out most anything and everything. For "fuck" they print "f---

I haven't yet learned to call you by your first name, and Miss Nin sounds so stiff, like an invitation to tea.

Poetry is the description of an intangible state.

One of my notes says: "Correct Anaïs' English." Do you want me to do that, or would Hugo consider that I am encroaching on his private domain?

She says she is Irish—Nell O'Connor, but she was born in Latvia and talks like a Greek.

It will be a she, too. I am tired of that "I," the weak I, the over-audacious I, the aggressive I, the timid I, the I of the Chinese language signs. I swallowing all my letters. Swallowing some of the notes.