Quotes About Words

If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.

You couldn't say 'I had orders.' You couldn't say 'It's not fair.' No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. [...] Not 'Thou Shalt Not'. Say 'I Will Not'.

Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening.

That's the trouble, you see. When you've had hatred on your tongue for such a long time, you don't know how to spit it out.

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters, it was storing words. In fact, what was being created was what we call a 'gevaisa', a tomb of living words.

Then Carrot said, It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, captain. That's what they say. What? Vimes' sudden rage was like a thunderclap. Who says that? When has that ever been true? It's never been true! It's the kind of thing people without power say to make it all seem less bloody awful, but it's just words, it never makes any difference -

Trolls have 5,400 words for rocks and one for vegetation. Oograah means everything from moss to giant redwoods. The way trolls see it, if you can't eat it, it's not worth naming it.

Writing stays. It fastens words down. A man can speak his mind and some nasty wee scuggan will write it down and who knows what he'll do with those words? Ye might as weel nail a man's shadow tae the wall!

IT WON'T HURT, said Death. If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.

He enjoyed reading and writing. He liked words. Words didn't shout or make loud noises, which pretty much defined the rest of his family. They didn't involve getting muddy in the freezing cold. They didn't hunt inoffensive animals, either. They did what he told them to. So, he'd said, he wanted to write.

There was, indeed, no life. Stillness and silence ruled here. In fact Tiffany, who cared a lot about getting words right, would have said it was a hush, which is not the same as silence. A hush is what you get in cathedrals at midnight.

How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be 'and,' 'the,' and 'I,' and 'it,' and so on, and there's a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you.

The press waited. It looked now like a great big beast. Soon he'd throw a lot of words into it. And in a few hours it would be hungry again, as if those words had never happened. You could feed it, but you could never fill it up.

It sucks all the life right out of you, civilisation. It killed Old Vincent the Ripper, said Boy Willie. He choked to death on a concubine. There was no sound but the hiss of snow in the fire and a number of people thinking fast. I think you mean cucumber, said the bard. That's right, cucumber, said Boy Willie. I've never been good at them long words. Very important difference in a salad situation. said Cohen.

Many an ancient lord's last words had been, You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh.

My mother didn't like to hear profanity, and she certainly never spoke it. She had always told us that swearing was the sign of a lackluster vocabulary and, worse, a stunted imagination. There are so many interesting words to use, along or in combination, she said, that I don't know why anyone would fall back on one-syllable obscenities.

To be read. To be heard. To be seen. I want to be read, I want to be heard. I don't need to be seen. To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones. Words have a weight to them. How you choose to present them and to whom is a matter of style and choice.

When it comes to words, rather than using our own voice, authentic and unpracticed, we steal someone else's to shield our fear.

Words empower us, move us beyond our suffering and set us free. This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.

Writing becomes an act of compassion toward life, the life we so often refuse to see because if we look too closely or feel too deeply, there may be no end to our suffering. But words empower us, move us beyond our suffering, and set us free. This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.

Conversation is the vehicle for change. We test our ideas. We hear our own voice in a concert with another. And inside those pauses of listening, we approach new territories of thought. A good argument, call it a discussion, frees us. Words fly out of our mouths like threatened birds. Once released, they may never return. If they do, they have chosen home and the bird-worms are calmed into an ars poetica.

My mother's journals are a shadow play with mine. I am a woman wedded to words. Words cast a shadow. Without a shadow there is no depth. Without a shadow there is no substance. If we have no shadow, it means we are invisible. As long as I have a shadow, I am alive.

In the desert I often whisper. Junipers are excellent sounding boards. They have been shaped by wing. Rocks seem to care nothing about what I say, yet when I speak to them, they feel porous, capable of receiving my words and taking them in as part of their history of brokenness.