Quotes About Language

Comprendo la Palabra, y los medios por los que opera, y de esta forma me disuelvo

When a Heptapod B sentence grew fairly sizable, its visual impact was remarkable. If I wasn't trying to decipher it, the writing looked like fanciful mantids drawn in a cursive style, all clinging to each other to form an Escheresque lattice, each slightly different in its stance. And the biggest sentences had an effect similar to that of psychedelic posters: sometimes eye-watering, sometimes hypnotic.

For the heptapods, all language was performative. Instead of using language to inform, they used language to actualize. Sure, heptapods already knew what would be said in any conversation; but in order for their knowledge to be true, the conversation would have to take place.

He means the Word: the sentence that, when uttered, would destroy the mind of the listener.

Conventional languages. . . lack the power to express concepts that I need, and even in their own domain, they're imprecise and unwieldy. They're hardly fit for speech, let alone thought.

in Nicole's mouth instead of mine?

writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you decide what you would say before you said it. And words were not just the pieces of speaking; they were the pieces of thinking. When you wrote them down, you could grasp your thoughts like bricks in your hands and push them into different arrangements.

You could not find the places where words began and ended by listening. The sounds a person made while speaking were as smooth and unbroken as the hide of a goat's leg, but the words were like the bones underneath the meat, and the space between them was the joint where you'd cut if you wanted to separate it into pieces. By leaving spaces when he wrote, Moseby was making visible the bones in what he said.

The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available. When

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

I like the idea of there being times when even words cost so much you used them sparingly. I have known a lot of old men and women who talked as if they were paying Western Union by the word.

I like the Indian casino names - Pechangas - Morongos. They all sound like women's breasts.

Mom always taught me not to use the word hate. As if it were profanity.

The thought of playing in Spain did whet my appetite - playing in a new country and everything that comes with it.

When I went to Spain two years ago, I only knew three Valencia players. I didn't know anything about La Liga, and within six months, I knew everything. I was speaking another language and knew everything about the game, so I am a fast learner.

In Spain, they're never direct, and that frustrates me.

I learned a lot in Spain.

Spain's beautiful.

I want to play in Europe and learn another language. Spain and Italy are options.

Not all my work features black actors. I mean, it's funny: someone was reading back to me all the languages that have appeared in my films, whether they were shorts or features. They span Arabic, French, Mandarin, Cantonese - all kinds of languages. I think it's really cool.

I don't speak fluent Spanish. I took it in college.

I speak some Spanish. I would love to go make a movie in Spanish. I'd love to be in an Almodovar movie or an Inarritu.

I read the greens in Spanish, but putt in English.

I might say something in Spanish; it all depends on how I'm feeling, what the situation is.