Quotes about wording
page 16

“She was, in other words, the kind of girl who made the rest of us look bad, and whenever she glanced my way, I couldn't help but feel guilty, even though I hadn't done anything wrong.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Way, Feeling, Girl, Help

“A book should be a garden that fits in the hands. Word-petals of color. Stems of strength. roots of truth. Turn a page and turn the seasons. Read the sentence and enjoy the roses.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Truth, Books, Color, Reading

“Lips to lips, mouth to mouth,
Comes the speaker of the shrouds,
Suck in the spirit, speak the words,
Let secrets of the dead be heard.”

Yasmine Galenorn (1961) American writer

Source: Witchling

Secret, Dead

“only through new words
might new worlds
be called
into order”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Source: , said the shotgun to the head.

World

“I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

“A sad smile crossed her face, and I knew right then what she was trying to tell me. Her eyes never left mine as she finally said the words that numbed my soul.
I'm dying, Landon.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Sadness, Smile, Soul

“Books are like friends to me. Words come alive on the page.”

Beverly Lewis (1949) American writer

Books

“Words are like eggs dropped from great heights. You could no more call them back then ignore the mess they left when they fell.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

“He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Books, Dance

“His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Life

“Words build bridges into unexplored regions.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

“You're my brother."

"Those words don't mean anything where we're concerned. We aren't human. Their rules don't apply to us. Stupid laws about what DNA can be mixed with what. Hypocritical, really, considering. We're already experiments.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Stupidity, Law

“It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.”

Naomi Shihab Nye (1952) American writer

Source: I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven

World

“To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Change

“He says, "I have loved you since the first moment I saw you. I wanted you then, and when I thought you didn't want me, I turned my love into hate."

"Ethan…" Before I say another word his mouth comes down over mine and he kisses me.”

Marianne Curley book The Key

Source: The Key

Love, Hate, Kiss

“These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Life, Age, World

“Kiss me, Hardy!’ Weren’t those Nelson’s last words at the Battle of Trafalgar? Don’t cry. We’re still alive and we make a sensational team.”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

Kiss, Cry

“What is the point of trying to put down on paper emotions that are too complex, too huge, too overwhelming to be confined by an alphabet?

Love isn't the only word that fails.

Hate does, too.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Love, Hate

“I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Life

“It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak the words that matter.”

Kate DiCamillo The Magician's Elephant

Source: The Magician's Elephant

Time

“Write a thousand words a day and in three years you'll be a writer!”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“To make a point of declaring friendship is to cheapen it. For men's emotions are very rarely put into words successfully.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

Men, Friendship

“Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.”

Theodore Dreiser book Sister Carrie

Variant: How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
Source: Sister Carrie

Feeling

“Here is all I ask of a book- give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Source: My Reading Life

Books

“I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture -- than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order.”

Mary Karr (1955) American writer

Source: Lit

Way, Learning, Clothes

“But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of Him. How they have turned every word He spoke for their own vile ends. Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

“Need some help?' he asked.
'Yes!' I yelled at him 'Help us!'
'What's the magic word?'
'Now!'
'Close enough.”

Michelle Rowen (1971) Canadian writer

Source: Dark Kiss

Help

“That word again. Happy. It’s a curse. The pursuit of happiness makes us deeply unhappy. It’s a trap. Before anything else happened, there was me in bed, thinking of who you used to be.
I don’t want you to think I forgot.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

Happiness, Thinking

“Marriage is a big word for all guys,” Shane said. “You know that. It’s kind of an allergy. We get itchy and sweaty just trying to spell it, much less do it.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Last Breath

Marriage, Guy

“No such word as. No such word asneither!”

Charlie Higson book The Enemy

Source: The Enemy

“And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.”

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

“Were you listening to a word I said '
'I kind of switched off when you drew breath.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

“Love is a word. A sound. Its association with a particular feeling is arbitrary, unmeasurable, and ultimately meaningless”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

Source: The Gun Seller

Love, Feeling

“The next time you feel rejection's sting, remember God's words to Samuel: "It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me." (1 Sam. 8:7)”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

God, Feeling, Time

“Veins practically popping out of his neck, the jerk leaned out his window and yelled a bunch of swear words, including a new one I tucked away in my brain for future use, if necessary.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Jerk, Future

“What is important is the story. Because when we are all dust and teeth and kicked-up bits of skin - when we're dancing with our own skeletons - our words might be all that's left of us.”

Alexandra Fuller (1969) Zimbabwean writer

Source: Scribbling the Cat

Dance

“There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Feeling

“There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious. To become oblivious in dreams was impossible now, at least till night-time; it was impossible to return to that music sung by carafe-women; and so one had to become oblivious in the dreams of life.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Pt. 1, ch. 2
Source: Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

Life, Women, Dreams, Music

“But remember this if nothing else: I love you more than there are words or stars. I love you more than there are thoughts and feelings. I love you more than there are seconds or moments gone or to come. I love you.”

Malorie Blackman book Checkmate

Source: Checkmate

Love, Feeling, Star

“Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Source: The Origin of Species

Life, Truth, Universe

“I hope some historian will confirm that I was the first cartoonist to use the word 'booger' in a newspaper comic strip.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book

Hope

“In other words, it's one of those books you thrust on your partner with an incredulous cry of "This is me!”

Nick Hornby book The Polysyllabic Spree

Source: The Polysyllabic Spree

Books, Cry

“In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

People, Lie, Way, Change

“That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“Overall, she seemed to be going for a sort of mid-’80s postapocalyptic cyberpunk girl-next-door look. And it was working for me, in a big way. In a word:.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

Way, Girl

“Constellations shine with light that was emitted aeons ago, and I wait for something to come to me, words that a poet might use to illuminate life's mysteries. But there is nothing.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Wedding

Source: The Wedding

Life, Light, Waiting

“Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

“Shame isn't a strong enough word for what I feel.
"You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know," Haymitch says.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Feeling, Strong

“We live and breathe words.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“… it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing…”

Galway Kinnell (1927–2014) Poet

Love, Flowers

“Love is a word we use for the desire to fornicate so that we seem more refined than farm animals." ~Lucian Balfour”

Suzanne Enoch (1964) American writer

Source: Reforming a Rake

Love, Animals

“When speaking to a Bear of Very Little Brain, remember that long words may bother him.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Variant: For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.
Source: Pooh's Little Instruction Book

“With schools turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word "intellectual," of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

School, Imagination

“Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Faith

“You seek a false comfort when you demand that I define myself for you with words. Words do not contain or define any person. A heart can, if it is willing.”

Robin Hobb (1952) American fiction writer (pseudonym)

Source: Golden Fool

Heart, Personality, Falseness

“He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

Silence

“When I believe in my ability to do something, there is no such word as no.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“For the time being
Words scatter
Are they fallen leaves?”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Time

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

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

1960s, (1963)
Source: I Have A Dream

Faith, Beauty, Dreams, Hope

“Exsanguinated," said Jace, impressed. "That's a big word."
"And you're a big-"
"Tsk tsk," he interrupted. "No swearing in church.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“I never use the words HUMANIST or HUMANITARIAN, as it seems to me that to be human is to be capable of the most heinous crimes in nature.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Nature

“These are the multiple shadows because there were a lot of things she walked away from without a word of explanation when she was younger & she still thinks about them more than she needs to.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Trusting Soul

Thinking

“Your going to come across people in your life that say all the right things at the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. it's actions, not words, that matter.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Rescue

Variant: You're going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words, that matter.
Source: The Rescue

Life, People, Time

“I said, "I do not fear those pants with nobody inside them." I said, and said, and said those words. I said them but I lied them.”

Dr. Seuss book The Sneetches and Other Stories

Source: The Sneetches and Other Stories

Fear

“There was that word again. Mature. Was this what maturity was? Giving up on the things we wanted because we knew we’d never get them?”

Diana Peterfreund (1979) American writer

“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Silence

“I can see time," whispered Mogget, so softly that his words were lost.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Sabriel

Time

“It’s a small story really, about, among other things:

* A girl
* Some words
* An accordionist
* Some fanatical Germans
* A Jewish fist fighter
* And quite a lot of thievery”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Girl

“With that, he pushed his way out… and as the door eased shut, she realizedcould indeed be said without actually uttering the phrase. Actions did mean more than words.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Unleashed

Way

“She took the facts and in a natural way charged them with tension; she intensified reality as she reduced it to words, she injected it with energy.”

Elena Ferrante book My Brilliant Friend

Source: My Brilliant Friend

Way, Nature, Reality

“Only if we assume that a poet constantly strives to liberate himself from borrowed styles in search for reality, is he dangerous. In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Nobel lecture (8 December 1980)
Context: Only if we assume that a poet constantly strives to liberate himself from borrowed styles in search for reality, is he dangerous. In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot. And, alas, a temptation to pronounce it, similar to an acute itching, becomes an obsession which doesn't allow one to think of anything else. That is why a poet chooses internal or external exile. It is not certain, however, that he is motivated exclusively by his concern with actuality. He may also desire to free himself from it and elsewhere, in other countries, on other shores, to recover, at least for short moments, his true vocation — which is to contemplate Being.

People, Truth, Search, Reality

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Reading

“We name us and then we are lost, tamed
I choose words, more words, to cure the tameness, not the wildness”

Alice Notley (1945) American poet

Source: Mysteries of Small Houses

“I think that this scene is upsetting because it calls us beyond fact into the vast world of imagination, and imagination is a word of many dimensions.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
Source: A Circle of Quiet
Context: In Kenneth Grahame's beautiful book, The Wind In The Willows, Mole and Rat go to the holy island of the great god, Pan. It is a superb piece of religious writing, but because it has gone beyond fact, it is deeply upsetting and untruthful to some people. If a story is not specified as being Christian, it is not Christian. But that is not so.
I think that this scene is upsetting because it calls us beyond fact into the vast world of imagination, and imagination is a word of many dimensions.

World, Imagination, Thinking