Quotes About Language

Kat and I talked about Jacob in our own private code. "Are you baking cookies yet?" she said. That was standard for : have you fucked? "Oh yeah. We've made a couple dozen by now." "What kind?" In other words, was Jacob any good. "Chocolate-chip," I said. "And he not only likes to bake them, he likes to eat them, too." "Congratulations.

Jacob was the only person I'd ever met, besides myself, who believed music was a cosmic language that spoke directly to our souls—to ease our pain, and to remind us we weren't alone.

Never comment on a woman's rear end. Never use the words "large" or "size" with "rear end." Never. Avoid the area altogether. Trust me.

Now the denominator ... why don't they just call it the bottom number? The denominator ... that sounds like a Schwarzenegger movie doesn't it? [impersonating Arnold Schwarzenegger] I am the Denominator. I'll give your leg a compound fraction!

Do Not Disturb signs should be written in the language of the hotel maids.

Do not disturb!' 'No molestar!'—ever get the idea some things aren't translating right?

the state retrained the bitter fishermen to farm clams, which they now cultivate with the latest marine science and profanity.

This is what I keep trying to tell you," said Serge. "If you're going to live in this country, you need to speak the language.

Hey, Serge, I just realized that 'slow up' and 'slow down' mean the same thing. That's fucked.

Language is power that gets abused all the time, Robin, but we've got real enemies out there somewhere and until they're out of the picture, I won't get knotted up over people who don't get all the words right. It's a waste of energy.

My work is better, maybe all filmmakers are better, for Polanski's imprint on cinema. He created language for all of us to use, there is no question about that.

There is no question of the government or myself attaching less importance to the use of English.

Shakespeare's always been sitting on my back, since I began reading. And, certainly, as a writer, he's who I hear all the time. And he's almost indistinguishable now from the English language. I have no sense of what Shakespeare is like. I have no sense of the personality that is Shakespeare. I think, alone among writers, I don't know who he is.

In music, there is no country; there is no time.

Our method of speaking is interrupted, hard-edged... a lot of consonants and noises.

You know, I'd forget words and start just singing noises.

I read both in French and English and often a couple of books at once, mixing fiction and non-fiction.

In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that.

I don't read much nonfiction because the nonfiction I do read always seems to be so badly written. What I enjoy about fiction - the great gift of fiction - is that it gives language an opportunity to happen.

If you're reading a novel that was written in 1964, you'll find out more about 1964 than if you're reading a nonfiction book written in 1964 because you're hearing how language was actually used and hearing what people's actual concerns were at the beginning of the 1960s.

I love playing with language and the rhythm of language - for some reason, this seems so much easier for me to do when I get to make things up than when writing nonfiction.

The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.

You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people's command of English - that's nonsense.

Sometimes I say things that I can't believe came out of my mouth. Or I won't mean something and it will come out completely nonsensical.