Quotes About Language

My parents were both storytellers. They always spoke with metaphorical richness.

Well, if storytelling is important, then your narrative ability, or your ability to put into words or use what someone else has put into words effectively, is important too.

Americans think cinema is about storytelling; I don't believe that. I think it's a language and everyone has to find their own way of speaking. It's not so much what you say as the way you say it.

Shakespeare is repeated around the world in different languages, just because it's good storytelling.

Music in Africa is perceived so differently than Western classical music - it's language and storytelling.

Republicans prefer straight talk to politically correct talk!

It seems a lot of straight men need a word coach or a lawyer when it comes to discussing 'Sex and the City.'

I am very straightforward. If I have something to communicate about dance steps, I just go up to the actor and tell them my thoughts. Language is never a problem.

Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.

I don't have a fondness for movies, which leaves me stranded when it comes to cocktail party chat, but I prefer language and books.

I keep forgetting I'm speaking in an American accent sometimes. The dangerous thing is that you end up forgetting what your real accent is after a while! It's really strange; I've never done a job in an American accent before.

I am a slow reader. I always loved words, which is a strange thing given that I couldn't actually read them.

Words are a strange thing. You once saw an animal and decided it's a 'cat.' But cat is a sound. This cat has nothing to do with the animal. But I have decided it's a cat. So a cat it is.

'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' had a formative effect on me. I think it's one of those works that if you encounter it very early you're doubly enchanted by the beauty of the language and the strangeness of the vision. It stays with you.

The strangest thing that human speech and human writing can do is create a metaphor. That is an amazing leap, is it not?

We have our own language. Christianese... We don't say 'He's out of his mind,' no, we say 'That's our youth pastor.

The names expose the namer more than they limn what's caught the eye.

The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.

one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

Words, too, have genuine substance — mass and weight and specific gravity.

Everywhere the culture reproduces itself, reflects itself, as in a hall of mirrors - the landscape, the language, the currency, all bouncing off each other, recreating each other - and in the midst of those mirrors, both reflected and projecting, stands the child, discovering himself in these castle walls, these terraced hills, the liquid words he speaks, and now in this coloured paper, too.

Per così dire», iva. Mi piace questa parola, iva. Dev'essere sanscrito. Certe cose Calasso le sa. Davanti a tipi come lui che capiscono il sanscrito non puoi che restare a bocca aperta. In ogni caso, ben venga l'apologetico quando si è davanti all'approssimativo. O al titubante. O al decisamente arrischiato. Ogni traduzione dovrebbe avere iva in appendice.

I laughed and discovered something that has served me well since: the more we threaten thought and language with silence, or simply seek to demote them in our lives from the ludicrous pedestal on which our culture and background have placed them, then the more fertile, in their need to justify and assert themselves, they become. Reflection is never more exciting than when reflecting on the damage reflection does, language never more seductive than when acknowledging its unreality.

The fact is, as soon as you start with words you're locked into a debate, forced to take a position with respect to others, confirming or rebutting what has been said before.