Quotes About Clarity

People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words.

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.

Much wisdom often goes with fewest words.

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

I am righteous and not afraid to speak my truth. My delivery might not always be as diplomatic as I would like it to be, but my words are truthful - spoken from the heart and to the point.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.

Freeing oneself from words is liberation.

Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Who has words at the right moment?

The words of truth are simple.

I realised quite early that by the time I articulate my thoughts into words, I'm on to another thought. And what comes out wasn't what I thought of exactly. So not talking was a better option.

An expenditure of words without income of ideas will lead to intellectual bankruptcy.

I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.

Mime is an art beyond words. It is the art of the essential. And you cannot lie. You have to show the truth.

Bind up thy words that they run not riot, and grow wanton, and gather up sins for themselves in too much talking. Let them be rather confined, and held back within their own banks. An overflowing river quickly gathers mud.

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.