“She knew few words and believed in none.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald , book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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F. Scott Fitzgerald 411

American novelist and screenwriter 1896–1940

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Visitor (2002), Ch. 40 : at ogre's gap
Context: She knew... everything. She had no words for what she knew. The pause became anticipatory silence. There were no words she could use for the reality and truth and understanding she had been given.

“Katie smiled and turned away, knowing it wasn't an illusion or a figment of her imagination. She knew what she saw. She knew what she believed.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

“[She] always knew he was a fiction but believed in him anyway.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“Freedom was a word that everyone mentioned but none of us knew. There wasn't much left for anyone to die for, except the right to remain peculiar.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: A Fear of Love

“She knew words no one had ever heard of, and she used words every day that had been mainly dead or sleeping for hundreds of years.”

Mark Helprin (1947) US author, journalist, commentator

“A man of true science… uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 63
This has sometimes been paraphrased: A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. where "hard" can readily be taken to imply "harsh" words rather than those "difficult to understand".
Context: A man of true science... uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the smatterer in science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.