Quotes About Language

We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn't matter a damn bit. We're no avatars, no sons of god or man. We're only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone.

The life of a poet lies not merely in the finite language-dance of expression but in the nearly infinite combinations of perception and memory combined with the sensitivity to what is perceived and remembered. My three local years on Heaven's Gate, almost fifteen hundred standard days, allowed me to see, to feel, to hear ? to remember, as if I literally had been born again. Little matter that I had been born again in hell.

I love being a poet. It's the goddamned words I can't stand.

For those who do not write and who never have been stirred by the creative urge, talk of muses seems a figure of speech, a quaint conceit, but for those of us who live by the Word, our muses are as real and necessary as the soft clay of language which they help to sculpt.

But he had once told Watson that the "less or fewer" issue, along with the use of "I" in such sentences as "He gave the money to Sheila and I", inflicted on the public by people who considered themselves well-educated, could be drastically reduced in frequency—if not actually abolished—by a few well-aimed pistol shots and an explanatory note that would be pinned to the victims' chests.

The right hemisphere was not without some language—but only the most emotionally charged units of communication could lodge in that affective hemisphere; my vocabulary was now down to nine words. (This, I learned later, was exceptional, many victims of CVAs retain only two or three.) For the record, here is my entire vocabulary of manageable words: fuck, shit, piss, cunt, goddamn, motherfucker, asshole, peepee, and poopoo;

Francis Bacon once said, "There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind.

Words are the supreme objects. They are minded things.

the difference between finding the right word as opposed to accepting the almost right word was the difference between being struck by lightning and merely watching a lightning display.

I discovered that the difference between finding the right word as opposed to accepting the almost right word was the difference between being struck by lightning and merely watching a lightning display.

To be a true poet is to become God.

What's it called?" she asked. "La putain enormé," said Ada. "What does it mean?

For the record, here is my entire vocabulary of manageable words: fuck, shit, piss, cunt, goddamn, motherfucker, asshole, peepee, and poopoo.

She does speak Bengali, doesn't she? Morrow had asked over the phone. Sure, I'd said. Actually, Amrita spoke Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and a little Punjabi as well as German, Russian, and English, but not Bengali.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt.

During those long months of beginning my Cantos on Heaven's Gate, I discovered that the difference between finding the right word as opposed to accepting the almost right word was the difference between being struck by lightning and merely watching a lightning display.

In the beginning was the Word. In the end Ã¢â'¬Â¦ past honor, past life, past caring Ã¢â'¬Â¦ In the end will be the Word.

Belay that!" cries the first mate. "No fucking profanity. Speak when you're fucking spoken to, Crispe.

He had always distrusted people who asked to speak freely or who vowed to speak candidly or who used the expression "frankly.

Mahnmut hield niet van Frans - het voelde als een te dikke olie tussen zijn tandwielen - Maar het zat wel in zijn database, dus kon hij het vertalen.

had been Mirandized. And a perfectly good adjective had been made into a verb.

Mark Twain once opined in his homey way: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." He was droll but incomplete. During those long months of beginning my Cantos on Heaven's Gate, I discovered that the difference between finding the right word as opposed to accepting the almost right word was the difference between being struck by lightning and merely watching a lightning display.

They're just words. And words alone don't really mean anything. It's what you feel and what you believe when you say them that matter.