Quotes about wording

page 20

“I knew it. In this way, Peeta's not hard to predict. While I was wallowing around on the floor of that cellar, thinking only of myself, he was here, thinking of me. Shame isn't a strong enough word for what I feel.”

“So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.”

“is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.”

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”

“I will use big words from time to time, the meanings of which I may only vaguely perceive, in hopes such cupidity will send you scampering to your dictionary: I will call such behavior 'public service'.”

“When you make a solemn promise to a friend, it ain't right to go back on it. No. Never let your friend down, never break a trust, and when you give your word, never go back on it.

-Sheriff Andy Taylor”

“There's no point in comforting words, in telling her she'll be all right. She's no fool. Her hand reaches out and I clutch it like a lifeline. As if it's me who's dying instead of Rue.”

“Desire backed by faith knows no such word as impossible.”

“I snatched the paper away from Dopey.
"Hey," he yelled. "I was reading that!"
"Let somebody who can pronounce all the big words have a try," I said.”

“In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are if only.”

“Fine… a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.”

“Start believing the Word of God over our feelings. The truth always overrides our feelings. Find the truth in the scriptures.”

“Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God's final word on where your lips end.”

“Is this a game? We just blurt out whatever word comes next to mind? In that case mine's 'genuphobia'. It means an unreasonable fear of knees."
"What's the word for a perfectly reasonable fear of annoying idiots?" inqired Jessamine.”

“It's unbecoming," she agreed. "A perfect word for my new life. Unbecoming. I who have always been unbecoming am becoming un.”

“Look, I need to tell you something,' I continued. The words came stumbling out of me. 'I couldnt stand it if… I dont want you to---'
Percy?' she said. 'You look like you're going to be sick.'
And that's how I felt.”

“In the words of a very famous dead person, 'A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.”

“What kind of beast would turn its life into words?”

“if you want someone to stop listening to you go ahead and yell. If you want them to listen to every word, whisper. -Mimi”

“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”

“My arms are killing me.
I didn't know words could be so heavy.”

“it's the belief, not the words, that mean everything. it's the floating.”

“The words you can't find, you borrow.”

“There is no such thing as an empty word, only one that is worn out yet remains full.”

“She is like all the rest of them. Whether they are seventeen or fortyseven, when they finally come to surrender completely, it's going to be in words.”

“Children are dying."
Lull nodded. "That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.”

“She woke up and realized she had forgotten the definition of the word ‘impossible.’ She decided it must not have been that important.”

“My mother just wanted me to forget it. So, of course, every word was immediately, irrevocably branded into my brain.”

“The complexity embedded in the different levels of meaning that go along with the words "I love you" ought to be a whole mindfuck of a video game”

“She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.”

“There are some experiences in life they haven't invented the right words for.”

“Where is this love? I can't see it, I can't touch it. I can't feel it. I can hear it. I can hear some words, but I can't do anything with your easy words”

“I punched to line. "Yes? What?"
"Norville. It's Cormac. If you don't change the subject right now, I'm going to have to go over there and have a word with you.”

“There is no time to leave important words unsaid.”

“The only stupid thing about words is the spelling of them.”

“Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.”

“Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.”

“Sitting over words
Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
Not far
Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
The echo of everything that has ever
Been spoken
Still spinning its one syllable
Between the earth and silence”

“Desire is not always lessened by disgust. Nor can it be bestowed, like a favor, to those most deserving of it. And as my words bind my magic, so you can know the truth. If she doesn’t desire his kiss, she won’t be free.”

“The more important the emotion is, the fewer words required to express it”

“The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.”

“But it was too early to know: there were always more pages to go, more words to be written, before the story was over.”

“"Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.”

“Anger, Tessa thought, was satisfying in its own way, when you gave in to it. There was something gratifying about shouting in a blind rage until your words ran out.”

“I could dance with you till the cows come home. Better still, I'll dance with the cows and you come home."
Groucho Marx was never one to pass up an opportunity for a play on words and this occurs in his dialogue of the 1933 film Duck Soup:”

“Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.”

“I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.”

“We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.”

“And I'm moved, it's so beautiful. Not what I wrote, but to have it given back like this. To have her remember the words and the tune. To hear it in her voice.”

“This is what is meant by last words: they are keys to unlock the afterlife. They're not last words but passwords, and as soon as they're spoken you can go.”

“I thought research would be more glamorous, somehow. I'd give the librarian a secret code word and he'd give me the one book I needed and whisper the necessary page numbers. Like a speakeasy. With books.”

“Disappear, she says. I love that word.”

“So what's the point of using words nobody else knows or can say comfortably? I just don't understand that.”

“Now I know I am an intellectual. I saw Malcolm Muggeridge on the television last night, and I understood nearly every word. It all adds up. A bad home, poor diet, not liking punk. I think I will join the library and see what happens.”

“I didn't mean to send love letters, but that is what they became. On their way to you, my words turned into heartbeats on the page.”

“Your power is in your thoughts, so stay awake. In other words, remember to remember.”

“Terrorism': the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything.”

“Silence is more eloquent than words.”

“I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.”

“You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.”

“There is a Dutch word, uitwaaien, “to walk against the wind for pleasure.”

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”

“The Alchemists’ beliefs are my beliefs,” I say quickly.

She arched an eyebrow. “Are they? I would hope your beliefs would be your beliefs.”

I’d never thought about it that way before, but I suddenly hoped desperately that her words were true.”

“You think you can say a few words and end us? There is no end, Eva." he flattened me into the side of the car. I was pinned by six feet, two inches of violently aroused male.”

“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but watch out for those damn words.”

“To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.”

“If you and I really, truly wanted to change the world, we'd invent more words that started with.”

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

“Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.”

“It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words, and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we don't know at all that it is the same with others.”

“Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.”

“As he bent closer, he realized they were words -- words his wife had carved into the cave ice with the last of her dying strength. As he read them, he felt them like three hard blows in the stomach.
KILL THE CHILD”

“He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.”

“Many times in life I've regretted the things I've said without thinking. But I've never regretted the things I said nearly as much as the words I left unspoken.”

“If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.”

“Keeping it short and to the point is essential, otherwise he won’t hear a single word.”

“It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.”

“It’s good to see your friends happy, isn’t it? (Nick)
How would I know? I have no friends. People basically suck and all friends will screw you over in the end. Take my word for it. (Savitar)
Then why am I here? (Nick)
Hell if I know. (Savitar)”

“No miles of level desert, no jagged mountain heights, no sea of endless blue
Neither words nor tears, nor silent fears
will keep me from coming back to you.”

“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.”

“What I’ve loved most after you, is myself: that is, my dignity and that strength which made me superior to other men. That Strength was my life. You’ve broken it with a word, so I must die.”

“Akri infallible. Well, except for a couple of things, and we don’t talk about those ‘cause it makes akri cranky. I like that word ‘infallible.’ It just like me. Infallible. (Simi)”

“While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.”

“I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.”

“The word aerobics comes from two Greek words: aero, meaning “ability to,” and bics, meaning “withstand tremendous boredom.”

“Individual words, sounds, squiggles on paper with no meanings other than those with which our imagination can clothe them.”

“Cecil flashed a grin. "Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your, ah…" Cecil paused, apparently groping again for just the right word.

"Equals?" Miles hazarded.

"Cattle," Cecil corrected judiciously.”

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

“In other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama”

“Some words were like that. Whole lives attached to them. Ghosts and lives and ecstasy and sorrow.”

“The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.”

“Fine," he repeated, and I wondered why it was I kept coming back to this, again and again, a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.”

“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”

“Did you read the book or did you just read the words in order?”

“Words were secret doorways and I held all the keys.”

“Charity, if you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or compelled is simply a polite word for slavery.”

“You think you can say a few words and end us? There is no end, Eva.”

“It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.”

“Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.”