Quotes About Words

Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us. If we were no longer here, words would lose their whole function. They would end up as words that are never spoken, and words that aren't spoken are no longer words. - (Where I'm Likely To Find It)

Words were one of the most powerful forces known— or unknown— to man. The Most High had created this world with His words. And humans, who had been fashioned in His image, could direct the entire course of their lives with their words, their mouths as the rudder on a ship, as the bridle on a horse. They produced with their words. They destroyed with their words.

The poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases. Who told the poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?

Kids use words in ways that release hidden meanings, revel the history buried in sounds. They haven't forgotten that words can be more than signs, that words have magic, the power to be things, to point to themselves and materialize. With their back-formations, archaisms, their tendency to play the music in words--rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, repetition--children peel the skin from language. Words become incantatory. Open Sesame. Abracadabra. Perhaps a child will remember the word and will bring the walls tumbling down.

Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

I try to find out what there is in the character that in a way, you can't put into words. If I could put it into words, then it wouldn't be a performance. And if I do put it into words, as I play it, I start to get boxed in by those words.

Sound words can't be understood through formal study of the language alone. They're felt when you immerse yourself in the culture or lifestyle that becomes a part of you. The Japanese language is abundant with onomatopoeia. Even though I've lived in Japan a long time, sound words are still an uncertain territory. And I think new words are being created every day. Even when I don't know a word I can sometimes connect it to a meaning using the sensations produced by the sounds, which feels like I'm playing with words.

Words aren't hurting anybody. Words are not causing any damage, not expressly and not directly. But we're so focused on the words.

Make your copy straightforward to read, understand and use. Use easy words; those that are used for everyday speech. Use phrases that are not too imprecise and very understandable. Do not be too stuffy; remove pompous words and substitute them with plain words. Minimize complicated gimmicks and constructions. If you can't give the data directly and briefly, you must consider writing the copy again.

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.

We fret about words, we writers. Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. Arrows stuck in the rough hide of reality. And the more portentous, more general the word, the more they can also resemble rooms or tunnels. They can expand, or cave in. They can come to be filled with a bad smell. They will often remind us of other rooms, where we'd rather dwell or where we think we are already living. They can be spaces we lose the art or the wisdom of inhabiting. And eventually those volumes of mental intention we no longer know how to inhabit will be abandoned, boarded up, closed down.

I get so much inspiration from my travels, but I also started an exercise where I write down so many words every week. Then I begin crossing them off. We create a grid of words and also images, but words for me are more ample because you can interpret them your own way.

You can't be blocked if you just keep on writing words. Any words. People who get 'blocked' make the mistake of thinking they have to write good words.

Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land.

I find my voice and manage to say those three one-syllable words back to him. Words I haven't uttered in a very, very long time. Words that meant nothing before now.

I opened my mouth wide one time to see if the words I was thinking would fall out, but they wouldn’t. If words don’t want to come out, they don’t. I don’t understand when people say things and then they say, I didn’t mean to say that. Words don’t just fall out. You have to push them out. And sometimes, you can’t push them out, even if you want to.

The bait is the means to get the fish where you want it, catch the fish and you forget the bait. The snare is the means to get the rabbit where you want it, catch the rabbit and forget the snare. Words are the means to get the idea where you want it, catch on to the idea and you forget about the words. Where shall I find a man who forgets about words, and have a word with him?

Words can fall hard like a boulder loosed from a cliff. Words can drift unnoticed like a weed seed on a breeze. Words can sing.

I love you," she whispered. Richard pulled her tight against him. His fingers traced a trail down the bumps of her spine. "I feel so frustrated that there aren't any better words than "I love you,"" he said. "It doesn't seem enough for the way I feel about you. I'm sorry there aren't any better words to tell you." "They are words enough for me." "Then, I love you, Kahlan. A thousand times, a million times, I love you. Forever.

All the creatures are pleased by loving words; and therefore we should address words that are pleasing to all, for there is no lack of sweet words.

Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is about the relation of words to reality - the way that speakers commit themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way their thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world.

But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, "I forgive you, Pa!" And he said those words because he sensed that it was the only way to save his heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.

There are worse words than cuss-words, there are words that hurt.

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid.

Words matter. Especially if you're kicking someone's ass in words with friends.

Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

Comics are a "young" art form, and there is much confusion as to how to treat them. Images have more immediate impact than words, and it is not every reader who can be convinced to relax into experiencing the work for what it is - not words and pictures, but a different form, where the narrative is propelled by the blending of image, word and sequence, and where no element can be extricated and have the same meaning by itself. When this art is shown in a gallery, its "thingness" is called to attention, it is no longer experienced as "story," but rather as an artifact of the artist's process.

I usually start with the words. The rhythm of the words gives me the rhythm of the song, and then I look for the musical highlights in it to carry it.

I approach writing a poem in a much different state than when I am writing prose. It's almost as if I were working in a different language when I'm writing poetry. The words - what they are and what they can become - the possibilities of the words are vastly expanded for me when I'm writing a poem.

He was always part of her thoughts, and now that he was real, he was inescapably part of her life, but it was as she had told her mother: saying he was part of her or that they were more than friends sounded like love, but it seemed like loss as well. All the words she knew to describe what he was to her were from love stories and love songs, but those were not words anyone truly meant.

From authors whom I read more than once I learn to value the weight of words and to delight in their meter and cadence -- in Gibbon's polyphonic counterpoint and Guedalla's command of the subjunctive, in Mailer's hyperbole and Dillard's similes, in Twain's invectives and burlesques with which he set the torch of his ferocious wit to the hospitality tents of the world's colossal humbug . . . 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.

The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.

That which I have set out in Latin is not my words but the words of God and of apostles and prophets, who of course have never lied. He who believes shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be damned. God has spoken.

I cannot imagine how any diplomat, or any dramatist, could improve on (Ronald Reagan's) words to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva summit: 'Let me tell you why it is we distrust you.' Those words are candid and tough and they cannot have been easy to hear. But they are also a clear invitation to a new beginning and a new relationship that would be rooted in trust.

Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason

I grew up in Russia where you can not be a trash talker because where I grew up if you're a trash talker you should have to answer for your words. If you don't answer for your words you're nobody. You have no respect from your friends, everybody but here in America everybody comes to say everything for free but they will have to pay in the ring for me.

But a problem arises because whenever I use words, those words have connotations in your mind. When I say 'Celebrate', you think one has to be happy. How can one celebrate when one is sad? I am not saying that one has to be happy to celebrate. Celebration is gratefulness for whatsoever life gives to you. Whatsoever existence gives to you, celebration is a gratitude; it is a gratefulness.

How long has it been since you looked into the eyes of your mother and, holding nothing back, spoke those welcome words, 'Mother, I truly love you'? How about Father, who daily toils to provide for you? Fathers appreciate hearing those same precious words from the lips of a child, 'I love you.'

Drag queens always love a portmanteau of combining words and making something new, because this whole world is shilarious. And so you have to contain yourself with words. Shilarious is just something that is a really hooty kiki funny item.

It's always music first, or melody and words together, but never words first.

I'm not an expert in the deck at all. My interest lies somewhere near a sense that words are like tarot cards, and that a poem manipulates unpredictable depths with its words. . . . I like the tarot because it works like poetry and because you don't really have to 'believe in' anything. It's there to be used. The symbols are remarkably durable and beautiful; they float out to encompass all kinds of meanings.

The problem with words is that they easily lose their meaning. Say something often enough and it becomes a tic, not an expression of how you actually feel. Not only that, but words rarely change things. Actions do.

The words went round and round and round in my mind and my body, until I knew they were no longer my words but something that had been carved into my heart. And now my soul was crying.

A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.

I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change peoples consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman.

Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can every quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as though she were the one to say them first. He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.