Quotes About Language

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us — the poet — whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom. However

The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects — born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.

And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demands, the implementation of that freedom.

Traditionally, in american society, it is the members of oppressed, objectified groups who are expected to stretch out and bridge the gap between the actualities of our lives and the consciousness of our oppressor. For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as american as apple pie have always had to be watchers, to become familiar with the language and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for some illusion of protection.

Speaking at last becomes a vice, like drinking. And why speak, if words do not cloak thoughts ?

L'abitudine a commutare il vissuto in poesia apre una valvola di sicurezza per eccesso d'impressioni e rimpiazza il bisogno di parlare.»

My early attempts writing plays, which are very poetic, did not use the language that I work in now. I didn't recognize the poetry in everyday language of black America. I thought I had to change it to create art.

Although my parents never attended church or mentioned Jesus except when they screamed at each other—and then they used his full name, 'Jesus Fucking Christ

I understand why sometimes people speak in cliches because sometimes there is no other way to describe something.

My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron. Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl.

Dutch isn't easy for the outsider to learn, because it's spoken from the back of the throat at the trigger spot for the gag reflex.

Dutch isn't easy for the outsider to learn, because it's spoken from the back of the throat at the trigger spot for the gag reflex. In order to make the correct sounds, you have to have quite a bit of phlegm at the ready, which is probably why everybody smokes. Nonsmokers can't even understand Dutch, let alone speak a single word of it. The

In one scene, when I was supposed to say, In a pig's eye you are, what came out was, In a pig's ass you are. Old habits die awfully hard.

He had to say; words were a lens to focus one's mind, and he could not use words for anything else tonight.

He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier.

While Egyptian speakers learned Greek, it was rare that anyone ventured in the opposite direction. To the punishing study of Egyptian, however, Cleopatra applied herself. She was allegedly the first and only Ptolemy to bother to learn the language of the 7 million people over whom she ruled.

a man who spoke no English, who would argue that whole conversations could be sustained in that language with the use of a single word (Goddamn)

Salem endures not only as a metaphor but as a vaccine and a taunt. It glares at us when fear paralyzes reason, when we overreact or overcorrect, when we hunt down or deliver up the alien or seditious. It endures in its lessons and our language.

A man can control only what he comprehends, and comprehend only what he is able to put into words. The inexpressible therefore is unknowable. By examining future stages in the evolution of language we come to learn what discoveries, changes and social revolutions the language will be capable, some day, of reflecting.

Doy la bienvenida a nuestros invitados, los filósofos europeos, que desean obtener información de primera mano de por qué considero que no soy nadie, a pesar de estar usando el pronombre de la primera persona del singular.

And then, with a sound not heard but sensed, a tenuous string snapped within me and I, a she now, felt the rush of gender so violent, that her head spun and I shut my eyes. And as I stood thus, with eyes closed, words came to me from every side, for along with gender she had received language.

la idea de anunciar la poesía de Shakespeare mil años antes de su nacimiento carece de sentido. Pues el autor podía no haber nacido, haber fallecido en la infancia, haber vivido de otra manera y, por tanto, escribir de otra forma; sin embargo, el habla inglesa preveía la existencia misma de la poesía inglesa.

among others—the Oofs (not the "Oops," as the text gives)