Quotes about language
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“Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.”

Beverly Cleary book The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Source: The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Love, Boy, Understanding, Nature

“You can never tell about a person by guessing… that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.”

Alice Hoffman book Practical Magic

Source: Practical Magic

Dogs, Personality

“Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Pain

“Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man seven different ways with her bare hands, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Way, Girl, Boy, Idea

“Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.”

Leslie Feinberg (1949–2014) activist and author known for authoring Stone Butch Blues

Source: Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue

“Language transcends us and yet, we speak.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception (1945), p. 349

“I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.”

Roland Barthes book The Pleasure of the Text

Source: The Pleasure of the Text

“There is a transcendental dimension beyond language… It's just hard as hell to talk about!”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Hell

“For a woman, language spoken is an expression of what she is feeling. For a man, language spoken is an expression of what he is thinking. A woman says what is on her heart while a man says what is on his mind.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

Feeling, Thinking, Heart

“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

“No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

World, Reality

“I'm looking for what might be called a body language. One thing I do is stick a vibrator up my cunt and start writing -- writing from the point of orgasm and losing control of the language and seeing what that's like.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

“Our exclusive dependence on rational thought and language has obscured our natural ability to sense the flow of energy.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: Brain Wave Vibration: Getting Back Into the Rhythm of a Happy, Healthy Life

Nature, Sense, Dependency

“People in general would rather die than forgive. It'shard. If God said in plain language. "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Variant: People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It'shard. If God said in plain language, "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.
Source: The Secret Life of Bees

God, People, Forgiveness

“Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Life, Heart

“Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

“The language of love letters is the same as suicide notes.”

Courtney Love book Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love

Source: Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love

Love, Suicide

“What happened? Did a house fall on your sister?" I asked. Maybe there was a benefit to our language barrier. She pursed her lips.
"You can't stay here much longer," she said.
My mouth dropped open.
"You… you speak English?"
She snorted. "Of course.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Sister, Housing

“Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.”

Thomas Bernhard book Gargoyles

Source: Gargoyles

Understanding

“War is what happens when language fails.”

Margaret Atwood book The Robber Bride

The Robber Bride (1993), Ch. 6

War

“Personally I like going places where I don't speak the language, don't know anybody, don't know my way around and don't have any delusions that I'm in control. Disoriented, even frightened, I feel alive, awake in ways I never am at home.”

Michael Mewshaw (1943) American writer

Way, Feeling, Home, Personality

“Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green in it's envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it's greatest rages, black.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Thinking, Rage, Heart

“What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Source: Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour

Star

“Mastery of language affords remarkable power.”

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) Martiniquais writer, psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary

“Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don't know how to read.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

Life, Books, Feeling, Reading

“And how does God speak to you?"
"In the language of everything that is beautiful.”

Mark Helprin A Soldier of the Great War

Source: A Soldier of the Great War

God, Beauty

“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Literature

“Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

As quoted in With Truth as Our Sword (2005) by C E Sylvester, p. 205

Drawing

“Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.”

Robert Bringhurst The Elements of Typographic Style

Source: The Elements of Typographic Style

“The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.”

Joan Didion book Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Source: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Thinking, Dependency

“Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Life

“The woman said something to Roman. He stopped, turned to her, and shook his staff.
She crossed her arms. I couldn't see her face, but I read the body language well enough.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Reading

“Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.”

Michael Crichton book The Lost World

Source: The Lost World

Children, Sense

“The clans began to bombard the outer force field with rockets, missiles, nukes, and harsh language.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

“It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case." --”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

“Learning another language is like becoming another person.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Learning, Personality

“Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication.
-Aunt Beast”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

“Language is like a road, it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Time, Reading

“Zoë threw up her hands in exasperation. "I hate this language. It changes too often!”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Hate, Change

“I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Other America (1968)
Context: I'm absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

“Amazing what the British do with language; the nuances of politeness. The world's great diplomats, surely.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

World

“The language of sin was universal, the original Esperanto.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Horns

Universe

“That’s what I like about sports. No matter if everyone playing the game speaks completely different languages, on the field, or the court, wherever they are playing, the language of moves and passes and scores is all the same. Universal.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Game, Sport, Universe

“Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Source: Cool Memories

Pleasure

“Teach her to question language. Language is the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs, our assumptions.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Source: Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Question

“I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.”

Nicole Krauss (1974) American novelist

“Language can be very adept at hiding the truth.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Truth

“History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.”

R. Scott Bakker book The Darkness That Comes Before

Source: The Darkness That Comes Before

Men, History, Thinking, Passion

“Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Law

“Nothing in life is fair. Fair is a dirty word and I'll thank you not to use that language around me.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dexter in the Dark

Source: Dexter in the Dark

Life

“Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages?" August said. "And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Love

“How do you say yoo-hoo in Arabic?"
"I believe that yoo-hoo could be part of a universal language," Dan said. "Like ow. Or- you're stepping on my foot."
"That's universal?"
"No, you're stepping on my foot. Ow."
Amy moved.”

Jude Watson book Beyond the Grave

Source: Beyond the Grave

Universe, Parting

“Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Sea

“We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

“We sit and talk,
quietly, with long lapses of silence
and I am aware of the stream
that has no language, coursing
beneath the quiet heaven of
your eyes
which has no speech”

William Carlos Williams book Paterson

Source: Paterson

Silence

“If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Chance

“I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much… so, so much.”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

Source: Maizon at Blue Hill

Death, Hope, Way, Star

“Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Source: The Eternal Now

Pain, Solitude, Loneliness

“❝Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.❞”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

People

“The love in his eyes was so powerful, I needed to look away. Seth had an amazing grasp of the English language, but there were days when that skill was nothing compared to what he told me in his looks.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Dreams

Love

“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

名不正，则言不顺
Paraphrased as a chinese proverb stating "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name."
Source: The Analects of Confucius
Source: The Analects, Chapter XIII

Truth

“If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: A Wallflower Christmas

Secret, Learning, Past, Country

“In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty -six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society.”

John Grogan (1958) American journalist

Source: Bad Dogs Have More Fun: Selected Writings on Family, Animals, and Life from The Philadelphia Inquirer

“I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“Erotic play discloses a nameless world which is revealed by the nocturnal language of lovers. Such language is not written down. It is whispered into the ear at night in a hoarse voice. At dawn it is forgotten.”

Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal

Source: The Thief's Journal

World, Lovers, Night

“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

World, Dead

“You who speak languages, you are such liars.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

“This, the language of deception, we both understand. We were born to it, along with the curses.”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

Understanding

“The primitive in each of us climbs closer to the surface during the night, for the moon sings to it, and the cold void between the stars speaks its language. To that savage self, evil can look lovely in too little light.”

Dean Koontz book False Memory

Source: False Memory

Love, Star, Light, Evil

“They were always like two people talking to each other in different languages. But she loved him so much, when he withdrew as he had now done, it was like the warm sun going down and leaving her in chilly twilight dews.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Love, People, Sun

“It's [the word “sorry”] the most infuriating word in the English language. Just a cheap way to behave badly then shelve responsibility by putting the onus on the other person to be forgiving.”

Minette Walters book The Chameleon's Shadow

Source: The Chameleon's Shadow

Way, Forgiveness, Personality

“I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.”

Katherine Dunn (1945–2016) American novelist, journalist, poet

Age

“It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

“[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.”

Aristophanés The Knights

Source: The Knights

Nature

“That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Literature

“There must be a language that doesn't depend on words.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Dependency

“Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

“Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can't deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can't be explained and understood.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

People, World, Beauty, Way

“I can understand bitchiness in any language.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Gameboard of the Gods

Understanding

“She even learnt the language of a strange country which Senior Cosetti had been told some people believed still existed, although no-one in the world could say where it was. The name of this country was Wales.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

People, World, Country

“You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't a true love.. the love that speaks the language of the world.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, World, Understanding, Personality

“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks

World

“I am like the fish in the aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that’s not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Life, People, Cars, Nature

“They took away our land, our language, and our religion; but they could never harness our tongues…”

Brendan Behan (1923–1964) Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright

Religion

“I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language. Without her to talk to, there was nothing to say.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Variant: I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language.
Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

“Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it's trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“Good writers are those who keep the language efficient.”

Ezra Pound book ABC of Reading

Source: ABC of Reading (1934), Chapter 3
Context: Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

“Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

“You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you can clean it up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.”

Jay McInerney book Bright Lights, Big City

Source: Bright Lights, Big City

Soul

“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

A similar line was later used by Ira Gershwin in "The Saga of Jenny" in Lady in the Dark (1942): "In 27 languages she couldn't say no."
Our Mrs Parker (1934)
Source: While Rome Burns