Quotes About Language

Niektoré slová stavajú múry, ktoré iné slová nikdy nedokážu zbúraÃ…Â¥.

C'est très bizarre les noms. Parfois on ne connaît rien d'eux et on les dit sans cesse.

All words are written in the same ink, 'flower' and 'power,' say, are much the same, and though I might write 'blood, blood, blood' all over the page, the paper would not be stained now would I bleed.

Now, if anything in the world is complex, language is complex.

Even the greatest works of art are couched, not in the language of "mankind," but in the language of a specific cultural tradition, and the loss of the tradition is like the loss of the dictionary;

Maybe it's the fault of our language but dreams are innocent and pictorial. Then let our dreams speak for us side by side, leg over leg, an electroencephalographic kiss flashing blue movies from temple to temple, as we lie gagged in sleep…

Words have little value in the kingdom of essential things. They're just decorations on the feelings too deep for us to put into syllables.

More important than learning to speak Japanese when you come to Japan is learning to speak silence. My neighbors seem most at home with nonverbal cues, with pauses and the exchange of formulae. What is the virtue of speaking Japanese, Lafcadio Hearn noted, if you cannot think in Japanese?

Young people use more aggressive words, senior citizens in that same area have more heart problems. The greater frequency of aggressive wording in a certain geographical area shows this social environment to be more charged with negativity, which causes problems to all—especially the aged.

Like language, books serve to express us, but also to complete us, furnishing, through a variety of excerpted and reworked fragments, the missing elements of our personality.

What we are able to say about our intimate relation with a book will have more force if we have not thought about it excessively. Instead, we need only let our unconscious express itself within us and give voice, in this privileged moment of openness in language, to the secret ties that bind us to the book, and therefore to ourselves.

Bien écrire le médiocre94 » : cette formule en forme d'oxymore concentre et condense tout son programme esthétique.

En réalité, comprendre la genèse sociale du champ littéraire, de la croyance qui le soutient, du jeu de langage qui s'y joue, des intérêts et des enjeux matériels ou symboliques qui s'y engendrent, ce n'est pas sacrifier au plaisir de réduire ou de détruire

A comunicação é instantânea porque, em certo sentido, ela não existe.

I enjoy receiving and giving realistic fiction, for both children and adults, with strong characters, beautiful language, and humane visions.

I speak fluent Hebrew and even dream in Hebrew when we visit there, once or twice a year.

In China, I realized that if you visit often enough and learn the language, you will be assimilated, but you'll still be kept at arm's length; you'll always be looked on as a foreigner.

I went to hockey camp at Michigan because my dad has some relatives in the Ann Arbor area. We went to visit them as kids, and you start to learn the language from being around people. At the same time, when I got to college, I thought my English was better than it really was. I learned a lot over my four years.

My parents made it a point that, although I was born and raised in New York City, I needed to speak Spanish because they wanted me to be able to communicate with my elders when I went to Santo Domingo or when my family came to visit from Cuba.

Visit any bookshop in Europe, and the shelves are filled with English novels and non-fiction books in translation - while British bookshops stock mainly English and American works.

When the Berlin Wall came down, my dad left to visit the U.S. He met my mom at this summer camp where they were both working, so I grew up between Washington Heights and Germany speaking two languages.

When I moved to Europe 12 years ago, my biggest concern was whether I'd ever speak decent French. Practically every American I knew came to visit, many saying they dreamed of living here, too.

I am required to shoot for 'Jaiyam' only for five days in a month. Being able to speak Tamil fluently, I complete 25 episodes each time I visit Chennai.

I am used to being places where I don't speak the language. What I am not used to is being in a part of a country where few people speak my language. Call it ignorance, arrogance, or what have you, but most places I have visited, I was lucky enough to be able to get by with English.