Quotes About Language

Musicals are written in English, and then we import them to Japan. When we translate them into Japanese, the sounds of the language are completely different. The Japanese language is not the best for singing, in terms of sound.

Anything well written with good language and clarity and honesty is worth doing. It comes out of the same tradition as Shakespeare.

In school, my favourite class was when we were given a subject for an essay on which we could freewheel. And poetry: I've always written it and loved the way words interact, in meaning and in sound.

I think the language as spoken in Limerick and Cork has not really been written; 'City of Bohane' is a combination of the two. Bohane is a little kingdom. When I began writing it, I realised that it was in the future and that it was a place that didn't care about anything that happened outside it.

I've made a dozen films in the English language. But then, for love, for my family and friends, I returned to Europe... I annoyingly - looking back - turned down films like 007, 'For Your Eyes Only,' written specially for me.

I have never written a letter in my life.

Something's that written out is okay, but it's not always a clear indication of what a person means.

But for me, really, the written word is always stronger than film.

I believe in a visual language that should be as strong as the written word.

The pen and the written word hold a great deal of power.

The written word is everything.

I think the written word is probably the best medium of communication because you have time to reflect, you have time to choose your words, to get your sentences exactly right. Whereas when you're being interviewed, say, you have to talk on the fly, you have to improvise, you can change sentences around, and they're not exactly right.

Words played an important part in my growing up. Not only the written word... but words that flew through the air: jokes, riddles, puns.

Everybody has their manifesto; let them talk their language, come to the people, and the people will decide. In a democracy, no party or candidate wins or loses. If you, the people, chose a wrong man, you lose; if you chose the right one, you win.

He said true things, but called them by wrong names.

You know, I do speak the Queens English. It's just the wrong Queens that's all. It's over the 59th Street Bridge. It's not over the Atlantic Ocean.

My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.

I was terrible in English. I couldn't stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention - it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature.

Even when I use a word in the wrong order in a sentence, I get mad. It's very stressful.

Actors always start with the voice and language. That's wrong. They should start with the body. The body is an actor's most important resource.

I had someone correct my grammar once on a blind date, and within the first 10 minutes the date was over. You just don't correct somebody's grammar. That's just not okay. I'm from Tennessee, so I probably say everything wrong. I might have said 'ain't,' or something like that.

I was 13 when my parents moved to Israel, and I was put in a Scottish mission school. Ninety-nine percent of the children were Israeli... Suddenly, I found myself speaking the wrong language, dressed in the wrong clothes, picked up by the wrong mode of transportation - an embassy car instead of a bus.

When I first discovered for myself the Celtic Twilight and read the earlier poems of Yeats and others, all was entirely incomprehensible to me. I groped through a mist of blurred meanings, stumbled through lines in which every accent seemed to be in the wrong place.

I went to 17 different schools when I was a kid. Every time I went to school, no matter what I talked like, it was always from the wrong place.