Quotes About Language

It is a sore point, because you do have advantages if you have access to more than one language. You also have problems, because on bad days you don't trust yourself, either in your first or your second language, and so you feel like a complete halfwit.

The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.

I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that is, I try to express complicated but I hope real emotions as simply as possible. But that doesn't mean the poems are simple, just that they are as truthful as I can make them.

In the plays - that's where I go crazy. But my prose has a much lighter touch; it's not trying to thrill with language, just to be more truthful. I'm not concerned with the accuracy of anything. We don't get to the truth of anything with facts.

See it all. See it fairly. Be truthful, be sensible and be careful with language. When nothing depends on man, everything depends on him.

Certain things can't be approximated, so I'm always interested in getting in another way, one which makes the reader bend in closer to the scene even if that scene, especially if that scene, is painful... Brutal language isn't necessarily the most truthful way of describing a brutal moment.

Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.

One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand

Stop using sentences in your material world that reflect what it is you do not want to be.

When I raced with Mercedes, I thought Id learn German. But my wife didnt want to live in Germany.

The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.

There are people who have tremendously important things to say, but they say it so poorly that nobody would ever want to read it.

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say

I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.

What is music? Music is language. A human being wants to express ideas in this language, but not ideas that can be translated into concepts.

Knowing that language has done so much, we want to believe that it can do everything.

In Manhattan last month I heard a woman borrowing the jargon of junkies to say to another, 'Want to do some chocolate?'

Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.

I can say whatever I want. So do not bring the kids. It's definitely rated R.

A dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.

Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.

I would love to adopt a child from a Spanish speaking country, because I want to have Spanish in the home.

Donald Trump came along and spoke in a language that speaks directly to a portion of the Republican base with what they want to hear. I don't think that he actually has a very significant ideology.

My name means 'hope' in Spanish and it's a name I want to live up to.