Quotes About Words

Language is the only instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

I am not yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

Lexicographer—A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

Poetry does not consist of words alone there must be sentiment and fancy, combination and arrangement.

He wanted to talk and had nothing to say.

All the misunderstandings that tie the world up and keep people apart were quivering before me at once, waiting for me to untangle them, explain them, and I couldn't. I didn't know the words, the grammar, the syntax.

I can think of no series of words that could appear in a piece of naturalistic fiction that could not also appear in the same order in a piece of speculative fiction. I can, however, think of many series of words that, while fine for speculative fiction, would be meaningless as naturalism. Which then is the major and which the subcategory?

Shiftrunes?" "Letters that are pronounced one way on their first occurrence in a text, another on their second, another on their third, and so on in a fixed sequence. It gives the poet an interesting technique to exploit: she can have pairs of words that alliterate visually but not phonetically as well as pairs that alliterate phonetically but not visually. And she can play the two off against each other.

It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.

The poems ... are moments when I had the intensity to see, and the energy to build, some careful analog that completed the seeing. ... All I have been left is the exhausting habit of trying to tack up the slack in my life with words.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in their best order.

I can't see words without reading them.

Then, in this hour stolen from the war, our love be worse beyond. We cling together with no words, until our scary silence be another nakedness.

Quotes are the enchanted way of freezing our thoughts in time forever.

Palabras, palabras, palabras. Plegarias nocturnas. Las que no se dijeron y ahora piensan y que en sus mentes son desgarrados alaridos, gritos de ansiedad y amor. Dos letanías silenciosas, y yo en medio de esa extraña tormenta, cerca de un planeta creado por ellos que jamás habitaron. Dos seres frágiles que añoran estar juntos y ser olvidados, y la vida, como un muro, interponiéndose.

Although they are only breath, words which I command are immortal

Although only breath, words which I speak are immortal.

I am weary of all your words and soft, strange ways.

I think of feminism as poetry; we hear histories in words; we reassemble histories by putting them into words.

Great Spirit who gave us the darkness in which to rest. In that darkness we send our words to you.' 

The teller has no responsibility to make the listener believe in the truth. Each must take the words and make them their own. No one can do this for another.