872 quotes found
“But the male lexicographers had somehow neglected to coin a word for the dislike of men. They were almost entirely men themselves, she thought, and had been unable to imagine a market for such a word.”
“We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.”
“Everything is language.”
“He walked through the woods like a young Adam, naming creation. I learned to shape my mouth to the wordssasumuneash for cranberry, tunockuquas for frog. So many things grew and lived here that were...”
“We, Brandy and Alfa and me, we've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first.I have no native tongue.”
“But language is wine upon his lips”
“My French was neither good nor bad. I had enough to understand what people said to me, but speaking was difficult, and there were times when no words came to my lips, when I struggled to say even t...”
“Verbalize someone's actions back to them. Menace them with language, the language mirror. Death by feedback.”
“AimlesslyIt pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. NoOne listens to poetry. from "Thing Language”
“I fell in love the moment I saw her in her grandfather's kitchen, her dark curls crashing over her Portuguese shoulders. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she smiled.'I'm really not that thirsty.''...”
“There is another system, more beaded than weather or murder, that is moving up into the province. As Les leaves the chair to investigate his sons crying a thousand zombies form an alliterative fog ...”
“Cussing doesnt come from a lack of vocabulary I know all the other words. None of them speak the same language that my fucking heart does.”
“Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write i...”
“Because you think your language is the best language? That because you were born and your parents babbled to you in this tongue, that it is the best language to speak? How small is your mind.”
“Loose and forbear!”
“Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved.”
“The more clearly we are able to express ourselves, the less room there is for ambiguity. The more elaborate and the more precise our vocabulary, the greater the scope for thought and expression. La...”
“Music is a language - and language, at its finest, should be music.”
“Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.”
“Dont bleach language, savour it instead. Stroke it gently or even groom it, but dont purify it.”
