WORDS QUOTES V

quotations about words

Just pick words and put one of them after the other like a baby learning to walk, like a drunk carefully crossing the street.

WILLIAM GAY

Provinces of Night

Tags: William Gay


Though I do keep lists of words that catch my attention for a variety of reasons, they rarely make it into poems, not infrequently because I lose the lists.

WALTER BARGEN

"An Interview with Walter Bargen", BkMk Press

Tags: Walter Bargen


Make friends with words. You can't give words a pat on the back, nor can you shake hands with words. But like an old friend, words can fill you with a nostalgia that's indescribably sweet.

SHUJI TERAYAMA

attributed, "VOX POPULI: Words are like friends that bring comfort and meaning to life", Vox Populi, January 27, 2016


What so wild as words are?

ROBERT BROWNING

A Woman's Last Word

Tags: Robert Browning


Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.

ROBERT ALTMAN

Esquire, March 2004

Tags: Robert Altman


Words are powerful, especially when they become actions.

PETE WILSON

"Words are powerful, especially when they become actions", Brazil Times, March 5, 2017


Language is a symbolic resource and words are rarely neutral. Given the many possibilities for using language to define, trivialise or make people and groups invisible, it should come as no surprise that linguistic intervention as one way to help build more inclusive societies has a long history.

LIA LITOSSELITI

"Use gender-sensitive language or lose marks, university students told", The Guardian, April 2, 2017


I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.

LEWIS H. LAPHAM

Harper's Magazine, November 2010

Tags: Lewis H. Lapham


Desires and words go hand in hand ... they are moved by the same intention to join together, to communicate, to establish bridges between people, whether they are spoken or written.

LAURA ESQUIVEL

Swift as Desire

Tags: Laura Esquivel


When you doubt between two words, choose the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge: love simple ones, as you would native roses on your cheeks.

JULIUS CHARLES HARE

Guesses at Truth


One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO

Death with Interruptions

Tags: José Saramago


I am spoken to not in words, which come to me quaint and veiled, but in signs, in conformations of face and hands, in postures of shoulders and feet, in nuances of tune and tone, in gaps and absences whose grammar has never been recorded.

J. M. COETZEE

In the Heart of the Country


Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Foundation and Empire

Tags: Isaac Asimov


I am not for imposing any sense on your words: you are at liberty to explain them as you please. Only, I beseech you, make me understand something by them.

GEORGE BERKELEY

Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous

Tags: George Berkeley


I sit and say nothing for fear
My words will turn to stone
And though they are sincere,
They will become a prison of their own.

GARRISON KEILLOR

Pilgrims

Tags: Garrison Keillor


Concerning speech and words, the consideration of them hath produced the science of grammar. For man still striveth to reintegrate himself in those benedictions, from which by his fault he hath been deprived; and as he hath striven against the first general curse by the invention of all other arts, so hath he sought to come forth of the second general curse (which was the confusion of tongues) by the art of grammar.

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning

Tags: Francis Bacon


It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you're not quite there and you're redoing it and redoing it and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard.

ELIZABETH STROUT

Newsweek, July 13, 2009

Tags: Elizabeth Strout


Words which enlighten some darken others.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


Kind words don't wear out the tongue.

DANISH PROVERB


Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion

Tags: Dan Simmons