“Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.”
Source: Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
“I tried to tell you, but words will not convey it. One has to be inside it to comprehend the magnitude.”
Atlas, on bearing the burden of maintaining the worlds, in Ch. 4
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: I tried to tell you, but words will not convey it. One has to be inside it to comprehend the magnitude. … It was the beginning. It's the only thing there is. But it was haphazard for so many aeons that it spooks me to think about it. There were always three or four maintaining it, but there was no one person strong enough to take it all over. "Somewhere there must be someone strong enough to take it all over," I said to myself in a direful moment, but the strongest person I could think of was myself. I've been doing it ever since. … By my attention I hold it all in being. Nothing exists unless it is perceived. If perception fails for a moment, then that thing fails forever. … I hate to be misjudged. They say that I bear it all on my shoulders, as though I were a stud or a balk. It's not on my great shoulders, it is amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains all.
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R. A. Lafferty 109
American writer 1914–2002Related quotes
“He managed to convey indifference, contempt, and boredom in the one word.”
Charlaine Harris
(1951) American writer
Doug Hall
(1944) American television personality
Denver Post Doug Hall of "Inventor" invents a lot, but not the truth http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_3645379
Anne Frank
(1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
“The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them.”
Anatole France
(1844–1924) French writer
Les plus beaux mots du monde ne sont que de vains sons, si on ne les comprend pas.
Series I : Propos de rentrée: la terre et la langue http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Propos_de_rentr%C3%A9e_:_la_terre_et_la_langue
The Literary Life (1888-1892)
Roberto Clemente
(1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player
Circa 1970, '71 or '72; as quoted by Blass in A Pirate for Life https://books.google.com/books?id=NfLFdUrYpH8C&pg=PT146&dq=%22I+will+hit+the+freaking+ball+to+Harrisburg%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiC8tLNxIrVAhVGWz4KHY_XBWUQ6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q=%22I%20will%20hit%20the%20freaking%20ball%20to%20Harrisburg%22&f=false (2012) by Blass and Erik Sherman
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>
Variant: Blass, I'm going to tell you something: You pitch me inside, I hit the ball to Harrisburg.
