Quotes About Words

Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies.

The meanings of words and the uses of words come from practice from the way people in a given culture use those words.

I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.

A journalist uses the most precise words he or she can. An artist does the same sort of thing. You gather material about a particular subject, you refine it as best you can.

Law builds upon and, I should like to claim, is one of the liberal arts. It uses words of persuasion and changing definitions for practical ends.

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.

The relationship with the words someone uses is more intimate and integrated than just a quick read and a blurb can ever be. This intimacy - the words on the page being sent back and forth from engaged editor to open author - is unique in my experience.

There is some argument about who actually invented text messaging, but I think it's safe to say it was a man. Multiple studies have shown that the average man uses about half as many words per day as women, thus text messaging. It eliminates hellos and goodbyes and cuts right to the chase.

I found a great book called 'Slang Through the Ages' by Jonathon Green. It's basically a thesaurus of historical slang, and had lots of great old uses.

As a songwriter who uses lyrics to connect with others, it made perfect sense for me to partner with Hallmark, the leading greeting card brand that also uses words to help people make meaningful connections.

Knowing some Greek helped defuse forbidding words - not that I counted much on using them. You'll find only trace elements of this language in the poem.

There are many bad things in this world of ours, but the use of the word 'monetize' has to rank high among them. Also, 'incentivize.' Actually, all the '-ize' words, like 'contextualize' and 'utilize' and 'prioritize.' And - this is almost too horrible to type - 'juniorize.'

Who on earth is going to use 'utilize' in a text message, a whopping seven characters including the always-hard-to-type 'z,' when you can say the exact same thing in three characters? I can't think of a sentence in which 'use' can't replace 'utilize.'

Why say 'utilize' when you can say 'use'?

We need a commander in chief that speaks the truth. We will not defeat radical Islamic terrorism so long as we have a president unwilling to utter the words 'radical Islamic terrorism'.

Lord, give us the wisdom to utter words that are gentle and tender, for tomorrow we may have to eat them.

We have, all of us, our duties. Every action of our lives, and every word that we utter, will either conduce to or detract from the discharge of our duty.

Why should I say I will retire in three or four years? You retire the very moment you utter those words.

These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words.

All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action.

Validation comes to us in two ways: through trials we overcome, and through the words of older men.

My rule of thumb is to always do what's on the page first. Then you can talk to your director about playing with it. Improv frees me up in a character, but I would be mortified if the writers who agonized over their words assumed I thought my improv was more valuable.

I write the occasional poem. I think my dabbling in poetry makes me better at screenplays. Poetry teaches the value of condensing, the importance of talking in a few words.

He also thought that 'abbreviation' was too long for its meaning, that 'monosyllabic' should have one syllable, 'dyslexic' should be renamed 'O' and 'unspeakable' should be respelt 'unsfzpxkable.