“Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.”
Source: In the Forests of Serre
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Patricia A. McKillip 30
American fantasy writer 1948Related quotes
Source: Tomorrow, When the War Began

James Madison Lecture at the New York University School of Law (February 17, 1960).

Source: The Pearl (1947), Ch. V
Context: He had said, "I am a man," and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god. It meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman's soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it. And yet it was this thing that made him a man, half insane and half god, and Juana had need of a man; she could not live without a man. Although she might be puzzled by these differences between man and woman, she knew them and accepted them and needed them. Of course she would follow him, there was no question of that. Sometimes the quality of woman, the reason, the caution, the sense of preservation, could cut through Kino's manness and save them all.
“All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.”