Quotes About Words

When I say, 'I can't stay long, I'm in-between meals,' that plays differently on the radio than it does in person. So I have to pick material that works because the words are funny, not just because of the images.

Dichotomies are an inherent part of comics, aren't they? Comics are both pictures and words. They blend time and space. Many feature characters with dual identities like Bruce Wayne/Batman. Cartoonists also tend to live dichotomous lives because many of us have day jobs.

I've learned enough times in life that saying something is completely different than acting upon it.

In talking, shyness and timidity distort the very meaning of my words. I don't pretend to know anybody well. People are like shadows to me and I am like a shadow.

With comedy it's all about timing and presence on screen, as the words are there but you have to say them right and the right timing.

It's so easy to use tired, shopworn figures of speech. I love using long, fancy words but have learned - mostly from writing my biography of Winston Churchill - that short, strong words work better. I am ever-vigilant against the passive and against jargon, both of which are so insidious.

The uncut diaries are 16 million words. It's very tiring to do your diary every night before you go to bed.

Since my student days, I'd been a fan of those books with titles like 'Great Speeches that Changed the World,' as I loved the idea that the right person with the right words at the right time could really make a difference.

I suck at titles.

I don't analyze things like titles.

I've never owned a T-shirt. I don't like vests or sweaters or cardies with zips. I like a proper shirt with a collar. There's nothing else that I think I look nice in. I don't think there's anything else that other men look nice in, to be honest. Things with words on! Can you imagine? On grown-ups! Words are to make books with.

Putting my words piece online was an important part of my plan to help women learn how to love themselves and have a better life.

In the early '90s, there was an attention to diversity. In this country, diversity was a good thing. People would use words like 'multicultural' and like it. Now, politically, those words are out. But I still feel theaters have to be diverse in order to survive.

One of the greatest things about writing as a profession is that the words of Tolstoy, Chesterton and Dostoyevsky have lived for a hundred years and are just as powerful today. Their words have changed me just as much as the people I actually met.

I was beginning to see, though, that the unknown wasn't always the greatest thing to fear. The people who know you best can be risker, because the words they say and things they think have the potential to be not only scary but true, as well.

The words of kindness are more healing to a drooping heart than balm or honey.

I gave up on cussing - I'd run out of words filthy enough - and just started praying.

I heard the huff of his breath, as if I had struck him, as if perhaps my words had reached through his self-righteousness.

Audrey had never understood why mean words sounded louder than kind ones.

Small, forthright words, used in the service of condensing experience, might have an idea buried in them as large as the most expansive work that wears its intellectualism on its sleeve. The unshed tears of the deeply felt are akin to the unused large words in the service of a thought.

Bitch is just a word that boys say when they don't have the power to hurt you any more.

Do not use poisonous words against anyone, for words wound more fatally than even arrows.

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.

Mark Twain once put it, "The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Power