quotations about words
Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...
ANNE CARSON
Nox
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
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.
MAYA ANGELOU
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Written, spoken or read I've always been amazed how one or two words could encourage someone to keep going. Or a devastating sentence could painfully break a person's heart. Even a simple written phrase could change someone's life forever.
HEIDI ALLEN
"Words Are Powerful -- My Journey With Words", Huffington Post, March 14, 2017
In the increasingly convincing darkness
The words become palpable, like a fruit
That is too beautiful to eat.
JOHN ASHBERY
Houseboat Poems
Word -- that invisible dagger.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
Talk is never just words.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
The way that words mutate reminds me of fashions in music. The word--the note--is a constant. But the setting and chord in which it occurs alters with the mood of a nation from major to minor, from the assertive to the mournful and foreboding.
NEAL ASCHERSON
"Chords of Identity in a Minor Key", Games with Shadows
Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation and Empire
Words are never "only words"; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
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
Of what use are good words to an evil heart?
LOUIS BECKE
"Solepa", By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore and Other Stories
Words are powerful, especially when they become actions.
PETE WILSON
"Words are powerful, especially when they become actions", Brazil Times, March 5, 2017
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
CHARLES DICKENS
Bleak House
I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
My method is to find a word with a gesture.
CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN
An Evolution in Aphorisms
He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
After all is said and done, more is said than done.
AESOP
Aesop's Fables
What so wild as words are?
ROBERT BROWNING
A Woman's Last Word