Quotes About Language

I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an 'Aha!' moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter.

In terms of smaller changes over time, I think good plays are like poems. Every syllable counts. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts.

When I first went to Japan, I was wrestling under my real name. The Japanese people have a great amount of difficulty with the letters f, r and l. So three out of the six letters in my first name they couldn't say. It was a bit of a mouthful for those guys.

I'm not, like, an English speaker, so I have confidence in my wrestling skills, also, like, body language, hand gestures, facial expressions. I put all of my emotion in my wrestling.

What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what's behind them.

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ attempt translation.

Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.

Hindi has never been a trouble. In fact, Hindi is the only language I can speak and write apart from Malayalam and English.

To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write.

I don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

Texting is fingered speech. Now we can write the way we talk.

Poets write the words you have heard before but in a new sequence.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.

I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.

It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

Reading the dictionary helps me express myself better. I can spend hours flicking through a thesaurus, too. It's not about expanding my vocabulary, it's just that I have a very specific taste with words. I'll sit and write lists of them to help me better describe my life.

I was born in Bangalore but grew up in Kolkata and I read, write and speak Bengali.

Being someone who had had a very difficult childhood, a very difficult adolescence - it had to do with not quite poverty, but close. It had to do with being brought up in a family where no one spoke English, no one could read or write English. It had to do with death and disease and lots of other things. I was a little prone to depression.

My mother is half Malayali and half Tamilian. I can speak Bengali and Tamil, but can't read or write.

I lost the power to write and I had to sort of relearn how to read and write to a certain extent and speak fluently.