Quotes About Words

It wasn't what she put in her mouth that would defile her, but what proceeded from her mouth, be the words unkind, slanderous, gossipful, boastful or blasphemous.

What follows is more about books than it is about me, but nonetheless it is my inward autobiography, for the words we take into ourselves help to shape us.

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.

I know a profound pattern humans deny with words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil and violence.

Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife? —

You can say things which cannot be done. This is elementary. The trick is to keep attention focused on what is said and not on what can be done.

He uses the nice old words so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it.

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced. —THE OPEN-ENDED PROOF FROM THE PANOPLIA PROPHETICA

A menudo es mejor observar lo que hace la gente e ignorar lo que dice. Las discordancias entre el comportamiento y las palabras son extremadamente reveladoras. La acción habla por sí misma.

After the first glass of vodka you can accept just about anything of life even your own mysteriousness you think it is nice that a box of matches is purple and brown and is called La Petite and comes from Sweden for they are words that you know and that is all you know words not their feelings or what they mean and you write because you know them not because you understand them because you don't you are stupid and lazy and will never be great but you do what you know because what else is there?

In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.

I ought to be able to invent words capable of blowing the odor of corpses in a direction other than straight into mine and the reader's face.

I am not actually tired, but numb and heavy, and can't find the right words. All I can say is: Stay with me, don't leave me.

Language is but a poor translation.

Auch ich habe Dich sicher oft mit Worten gekränkt, aber dann wußte ich es immer, es schmerzte mich, aber ich konnte mich nicht beherrschen, das Wort nicht zurückhalten, aber ich bereute es schon, während ich es sagte.

I love American English, not least because a lot of it was ours to begin with. Indeed, many Americanisms can be found in the works of William Shakespeare.

Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature - be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Moliere.

Rove and his attorneys can parse the words all they want, but it is now clear that while Rove may not have given a reporter Plame's name, he clearly identified her by telling the reporter that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent.

I saw my sister in this production of 'Whistle Down the Wind' - my sister was a really big theater kid - and when I saw her do that, I was so obsessed. Those were like my first words; I was singing along to the songs. From that point on, I did theater, and then I got into acting in film and television.

Music moves me - duh - and that is like having a window opening on a heightened reality, but the effect is fleeting: When the music ends, the magic, the uplifting, vanishes and the window slams shut. Words, on the other hand, by the nature of how they work, emotions evoked by dint of carefully laid out thoughts, have a more lingering effect.

The suffragettes were women of action. Their motto was 'Deeds not Words,' and the film reflects that with a number of big set pieces, from the smashing of windows in central London to a riot at the Houses of Parliament.

When you make as many speeches and you talk as much as I do and you get away from the text, it's always a possibility to get a few words tangled here and there.

Editing is more by-the-hip. You look at a text and ask yourself how it can be improved.

We have cut the text, but what remains are Shakespeare's words.