quotations about words
A laxity pervades the popular use of words.
CHARLES LAMB
"Table-Talk and Fragments of Criticism", The Life and Works of Charles Lamb
Twas a special gift of God that speech was given to mankind; for through the Word, and not by force, wisdom governs.
MARTIN LUTHER
"Of God's Word", Table Talk
Words ... are little houses, each with its cellar and garret.
GASTON BACHELARD
The Poetics of Space
You gave yourself away, word by word, every time you opened your trap to speak.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
A man does not die for words. He dies for his relation to them.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
A Place To Come To
Words come reluctantly to me, they clatter in my mouth and tumble out heavily like stones.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"Words Fail Me", BBC Radio, April 29, 1937
There have been countless nights now that I have sat at my computer staring at a blank screen, in hopes I could find some words to describe the feelings and thoughts that have been going through my head. Countless nights where I lay awake disappointed with the fact another night went by, and still I was stuck with nothing. I never really understood why kids in my classes over the years hated writing papers, but now I understand more than ever. Not being able to find the right words to describe the thoughts going through you head absolutely sucks.
SAM WAKITSCH
"I write because to me, words are beautiful", Chicago Now, January 25, 2016
What lives in words is what words were needed to learn.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"To Speech"
Talking, talking, spinning a spell, pale skin of words that closes me in like a coffin.
JOHN GARDNER
Grendel
The pressed oil of words can blaze up into music, into image, into the heart and mind's knowledge. The lit and shadowed places within us can be warmed.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
ELIE WIESEL
attributed, The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom
When we think, our thoughts are in the form of words, so authorities must never be permitted to outlaw or edit our thinking by redefining or outlawing our words.
JONATHAN HOFFMAN
"Words are thoughts; protect them", Arizona Daily Star, March 11, 2017
Sometimes you want to say things, and you're missing an idea to make them with, and missing a word to make the idea with. In the beginning was the word. That's how somebody tried to explain it once. Until something is named, it doesn't exist.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Babel-17
Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
It by no means follows, that because two men utter the same words, they have precisely the same idea which they mean to express: language is inadequate to the variety of ideas which are conceived by different minds, and which, could they be expressed, would produce a new variety of characteristic differences between man and man.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
I hated the words. Each one was like a big live insect in my mouth.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementary sense of implying its absence -- by naming a thing, we treat it as absent, as dead, although it is still present -- but above all in the sense of its radical dissection: the word "quarters" the thing, it tears it out of the embedment in its concrete context, it treats its component parts as entities with an autonomous existence: we speak about color, form, shape, etc., as if they possessed self-sufficient being.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out
Even when we know things, sometimes it takes words to make them concrete.
GLEN COOK
Ceremony
What happens to a country when a leader's words are worthless, when their promises are toothless or utterly useless?
BRIAN STELTER
"CNN Drops The Hammer On Trump And Tells America That The President's Words Are Worthless", PoliticusUSA, March 26, 2017