Quotes About Language

Since it is words that bind us to things, we cannot detach ourselves from things unless we first break with words.

At this very moment, I am suffering—as we say in French, j'ai mal.

Zi dup? zi, m? târ?sc pe o bucat? de spaÈ›iu, la marginea Universului, în mijlocul unei infinit??i de cuvinte nepronunÈ›ate.

If with each word we win a victory over nothingness, it is only the better to endure its reign. We die in proportion to the words which we fling around us . . . Those who speak have no secrets. And we all speak. We betray ourselves, we exhibit our heart; executioner of the unspeakable, each of us labors to destroy all the mysteries, beginning with our own.

There are a thousand perceptions of Nothing, and only one word to translate them: the indigence of language renders the universe intelligible . . .

Poem, novel, essay, play—everything seems too long. The writer—it is his function—always says more than he has to say: he swells his thought and swathes it with words.

Modelos de estilo: el juramento, el telegrama y el epitafio.

Al gallego no se le pesca con anzuelo de aire

I am married to a man who calls a phone charger 'the pluggy-in thing', and the remote control 'the buttony thing for the telly'.

I sat staring, staring, staring - half lost, learning a new language or rather the same language in a different dialect. So still were the big woods where I sat, sound might not yet have been born.

A Word is Dead A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.

I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.

In ancient times, as to-day in Asia and Africa, slaves were simply called slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of "serfs", to-day they are called "wage-earners".

In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell.... we can't dance synonyms.

There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one.

Nous n'y connaissons pas encore de remède au mal que produit une phrase.

Science is the language of the Temporal world, Love is that of the Spiritual world.

Living like that utterly convinced me of the extreme limitations of language. I was just a child then, so I had only an intuitive understanding of the degree to which one losses control of words once they are spoken or written. It was then that I first felt a deep curiosity about language, and understood it as a tool that encompasses both a single moment and eternity.

It was then that I first felt a deep curiosity about language, and understood it as a tool that encompasses both a single moment and eternity.

Les mots sont toujours trop abrupts, ils éteignent ce qu'il y a de plus précieux dans ces fragiles étincelles.

Las palabras son siempre demasiado explicítas y apagan del todo el valor de una luz tenue como aquélla.

I don't think any novelist is happy being just a novelist. I'm sure you know this. We should be poets. We should be composers and we should be making language do things that the novel won't allow you to do. This is what I've been trying to do for a long time.

The world is not real for me until it has been pushed through the mesh of language.

Irish English is a very different beast from English English or American English. Very different. The way in which Irish writers are only too happy to infuse their language with ambiguity is very different. An English writer will try to be clear. Orwell said that good prose should be like a pane of glass. The Irish writer would say: 'No no, it's a lens, it distorts everything.'