Quotes About Language

Sometimes the wrong thing is said or things don't come out the way they were intended.

When you are a sentence-based writer, they have to be good. They have to be really on the spot. Because when you don't have a plot, really, what shall you rely on? Just language. And sometimes I am so afraid of writing the wrong thing, I just sit and wait for the right thing to come.

It is a fine line between making fun of the right thing and making fun of the wrong thing. And the language oftentimes is the same.

I will probably get creamed for saying this, but as a CEO, I've felt a little scared to talk about diversity and inclusion - not because I don't want a more diverse team, but because I've been afraid to use the wrong language or say the wrong thing. My guess is that this is a common sentiment among many CEOs in tech. That fear will crush you.

I'm scared of saying something that may get taken the wrong way.

Sometimes it's Tune-berg, sometimes Thunn-berg. I mean, I think it's funny that everyone pronounces it differently. So, that is just - I don't mind anyone pronouncing it wrong. There's no wrong way to pronounce it. Everyone pronounces it in their own way.

Somehow when I express my voice, I feel that much more vulnerable. For instance, if I used the wrong word, or if I said something and somebody could take the word and misinterpret it.

When I wrote 'The Giver,' it contained no so-called 'bad words.' It was set, after all, in a mythical, futuristic, and Utopian society. Not only was there no poverty, divorce, racism, sexism, pollution, or violence in the world of 'The Giver'; there was also careful attention paid to language: to its fluency, precision, and power.

But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.

I wrote it three times - with a Thesaurus.

Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was something I thought of before I even wrote that story.

I do all my speeches in pictures. If I wrote words, I'd get locked in on them.

I don't think anybody in my family meant there to be any pressure for me to write. But our parents were incredibly verbal and wrote for a living. The house was full of books, and we all grew up steeped in language. I mean, our mother recited poetry at the dinner table.

English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it's not by design. The United States dominates because it's the biggest market.

But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write in English, a man of genius, to interpret and improve on him, was not found for a long time.

Practice, learn the lines, work hard, don't be too respectful. Sometimes we can get too hung up on the fact that the material of the play is very finely wrought language.

My brain can form thoughts that come out through my mouth. The problem is sometimes I stumble the words because I speak five different languages - we know all that - so the thing is, I like to speak the language that everybody speaks all around the world, that the WWE Universe loves... that's the language of wrestling that I do in the ring.

Language is important, I know, for the TV show, so a lot of people watches 'WWE' everywhere. Asia, Africa... some people don't understand English like me. That's why I use facial expressions and body motions.

If you look back at my six-year run in the WWE, I never cursed on TV once, never cursed once.

When I was at Yale, I was one of the students chosen to go to China. I lived there for 1-1/2 years and I can speak Mandarin fluently.

Your man Daddy Yankee, some black and white people who know what's going on in the 'hood and the clubs are supporting him and loving him. But he's speaking Spanish, and he's speaking directly to the Latino people, and the people who know the language really dig it.

Yankees don't understand that the Southern way of talking is a language of nuance. What we can do in the South is we can take a word and change it just a little bit and make it mean something altogether different.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

'Senior Citizen' and 'Silver Surfer' are the new euphemisms. Unless you're a female presenter on TV, in which case you're ready for the knacker's yard at 35.