“You've often heard me say – perhaps too often – that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.”

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

“296. The child saies nothing but what it heard by the fire.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

“You've got to say what you mean and mean what you say… Doubt in your voice is an open door people will shove right through.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

“It’s not so much that nothing means
anything but more that it keeps meaning
nothing.
there’s no release, just gurus and self-
appointed gods and hucksters.
the more people say, the less there is to say.
even the best books are dry sawdust.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“Suddenly, I don't know what to say. It happens often to me. I know what I want to say, I think about whether it is what I mean, but when the moment comes to speak, I can't say it.
- Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

“But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

“Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

“I mean what I say and I try to say what I mean.”

Bowinn Ma (1985) Canadian politician