Quotes About Language

I came from a Hindi medium school... the principal felt that I would not fit into an English medium college. Though I was top in my class in school, and I got admission in other colleges, but I really wanted to study in St. Xavier's.

I think the first time 'white' was used was in the 1600s. Generally, we were described by where we came from... All of a sudden, this word 'white' came through, and now everyone is going for their own sense of power... to figure out who's on top.

I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's even more exciting when you read a poet like Yeats, almost 100 years old now, and you think that perhaps no one can really top that.

Contemporary Swedish artists that chose Swedish as their language tended to sing about certain topics and use words I wanted to avoid.

Good buildings make and are made by their settings, and they are appropriately different in different locations. Climate, culture, topography and materials have helped create regional architectural languages that seem curiously right for their locations and for all times.

Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily, it's usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is 'fairy lights,' which we boringly refer to as 'Christmas lights.'

We just say things differently in Australia - like torch. I'd ask, 'Can I have the torch?' It seems to fall flat when I say, 'Can I have the flashlight?'

The only thing that exists is torment, lyricism, and the magnificence of language.

Now begins a torrent of words and a trickling of sense.

I tried to take seriously the idea that if you tortured language you might arrive at some new truth. Later it became clear to me that I was retreading ground by fighting the literary battles of the 1950s and 1960s, and that I was actually a bit bored by some of the books I professed to love.

A gloss is a total system of perception and language.

I grew up in South Mumbai and I am a total homebody, so I was not seen around. I guess that's the reason many believed that I wasn't Indian or can't speak Hindi.

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

No sooner my kids leave their friends than they start texting them. And it's all in code in a language I totally don't understand.

There was certainly less profanity in the Godfather than in the Sopranos. There was a kind of respect. It's not that I totally agreed with it, but it was a great piece of art.

I met my wife through playing golf. She is French and couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak French, so there was little chance of us getting involved in any boring conversations - that's why we got married really quickly.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the Itteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat Itteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Author Philip Dick once wrote, "The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

Writing is controlled substance. It acts with the least mediation and strongest effect.

Now yet again I discover I do not have the language, the lingo, to talk to her about this, or about anything. We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach.

He wondered suddenly and definitely for the first time in his life what words might be. Sounds and sense certainly, but something else also, a kind of natural music that explained a man's heart or heartlessness, words as tempered as steel, as soft as air.

Krezy, he pronounced it, krezy. Pure Roscommon. Pure Ghana.

Sometimes a person who is utterly devoid of charm will try to create a good impression by using very elegant language; yet he only succeeds in being ridiculous.

According to Cemil Cicek these people do not have problems regarding language, culture or faith, all is about the circumcision. If that is really the problem and if you are so interested we can appoint you as the "government circumciser" and send you to Kandil (PKK HQ in northern Iraq) to solve it. (On the quote of Cemil Cicek, speaker for AKP: "Some of those PKK terrorists without circumcision should tell you a lot about the issue")