172 quotes found
“We have an odd relationship with words. We learn a few when we are small, throughout our lives we collect others through education, conversation, our contact with books, and yet, in comparison, the...”
“Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word, not deserv...”
“For Hood's sake,' the foreigner muttered. 'What's wrong with words?' 'With words,' said Redmask, turning away, 'meanings change.' 'Well,' Anaster Toc said, following as Redmask made his way back to...”
“Words can change their meaning, just by repeating them.”
“In Sanskrit words are like living beings; depending on context, circumstance and environment their mood varies and meaning differs.”
“Science fiction" means different things to different people. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra"in which case the term science fiction has p...”
“How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!”
“I often feel an aversion, even disgust at the same words written and spoken over and over at the same expressions, phrases, and metaphors repeated. And the worst is, when I listen to myself I have...”
“Jackson," he mused. "Not a name either one of you was born to."Lizzie answered, "No. But beyond a certain point, names become accessories. We swap them out as needed, for the sake of peace. You und...”
“The thing is to sift outthe important sounds, little syllables and vowels that bringhints of their lost words, and not to mistake the fossil forthe life, or the kiss for the love, not to mistake th...”
“That brief walk was one of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment ...”
“Our dreams and stories may contain implicit aspects of our lives even without our awareness. In fact, storytelling may be a primary way in which we can linguistically communicate to othersas well a...”
“Our sunsets have been reduced to wavelengths and frequencies. The complexities of the universe have been shredded into mathematical equations. Even our self-worth as human beings has been destroyed.”
“That nature does not care, one way or the other, is the true abyss. That only man cares, in his finitude facing nothing but death, alone with his contingency and the objective meaninglessness of hi...”
“Sometimes we have thoughts that even we dont understand. Thoughts that arent even truethat arent really how we feelbut theyre running through our heads anyway because theyre interesting to think ab...”
“Was everyone else really as alive as she was?... If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyones thoughts striving in equ...”
“But if time exists only in my head, and I'm the last human being, it will end with my death. The thought cheers me. I may be in a position to murder time. The big net will tear and fall, with its s...”
“It is, of course, we who house poems as much as their words, and we ourselves must be the locus of poetry's depth of newness. Still, the permeability seems to travel both ways: a changed self will ...”
“Perhaps its true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burn...”
“Tut, tut, child!" said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.”
