“He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.”

— Khaled Hosseini , book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Last update Dec. 5, 2024. History

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Khaled Hosseini 226

novelist 1965

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“If culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, [and] to all rooms inside.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“You can't leave me alone," she said, following him into the living room.
"Yes," he corrected, "I can. You'll be perfectly safe."
"The front door's off!"
"Well, yes. You'll be perfectly safe as long as they don't come through the front door.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“Without language, how can we tell anyone what we feel, or what we think? It might be said that until he developed language, man had no soul, for without language how could he reach deep inside himself and discover the truths that are hidden there, or find out what emotions he shared, or did not share, with his fellow men and women.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

On Seeing Plays (1990).
Context: It is mankind's discovery of language which more than any other single thing has separated him from the animal creation. Without language, what concept have we of past or future as separated from the immediate present? Without language, how can we tell anyone what we feel, or what we think? It might be said that until he developed language, man had no soul, for without language how could he reach deep inside himself and discover the truths that are hidden there, or find out what emotions he shared, or did not share, with his fellow men and women. But because this greatest gift of all gifts is in daily use, and is smeared, and battered and trivialized by commonplace associations, we too often forget the splendour of which it is capable, and the pleasures that it can give, from the pen of a master.

“Of my Base metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)
Context: The Vine had struck a fibre: which about
If clings my being — let the Dervish flout;
Of my Base metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.