Quotes about wording

page 21

“The fact thatis the word we use for almost everything—on terrorism, drugs, even poverty—has certainly helped to desensitize us to its invocation; if we wage wars on everything, how bad can they be?”

“I wanted to touch him, to tell him that even if everyone left everyone, I would never leave him, he talked and talked, his words fell through him, trying to find the floor to his sadness.”

“And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”

“I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?”

“The word friends doesn't seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. We forget where one of us starts and the other one stops.”

“I smiled back, the importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them, or, in other words, sometimes politeness is all that stands between oneself and madness.”

“I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.”

“Not being able to think of a reply is not the same thing as accepting another's words.”

“It is clear that the world is purely parodic, in other words, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.
Ever since sentences started to circulate in brains devoted to reflection, an effort at total identification has been made, because with the aid of a copula each sentence ties one thing to another; all things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of Ariadne’s thread leading thought into its own labyrinth.
But the copula of terms is no less irritating than the copulation of bodies. And when I scream I AM THE SUN an integral erection results, because the verb to be is the vehicle of amorous frenzy.
Everyone is aware that life is parodic and that it lacks an interpretation. Thus lead is the parody of gold. Air is the parody of water. The brain is the parody of the equator. Coitus is the parody of crime.”

“My first words, as I was being born… I looked up at my mother and said, "that's the last time I'm coming out one of those."”

“To the loved, a word of affection is a morsel; but to the love-starved, a word of affection can be a feast.”

“Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”

“I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.”

“Freedom is… the right to write the wrong words.”

“The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.”

“Doughboy," I said. "What is this scroll?"
"A spell lost in time!" he pronounced. "Ancient words of tremendous power!"
"Well?" I demanded. "Does it tell how to defeat Set?"
"Better! The title reads: The Book of Summoning Fruit Bats!”

“Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.”

“The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.”

“I know I’m not supposed to say this,” he said. “But I think I love you more than ever.”

I took his hand and tried not to think about how happy his words made me.”

“I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted.”

“Fight your battles with words, not fists”

“I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.”

“A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.”

“I hear you. I just don't believe a word you say.”

“Love changes everything. Days are longer, words mean more. Love changes everything. Pain is deeper than before. Love can turn your world around, and that world will last forever.”

“One guy wore nothing but a Speedo. He’d painted himself blue and was armed only with a baseball bat. Across his chest were the words COME AT ME, BRO.”

“Lists only spell out the things that can be taken away from us by moths and rust and thieves. If something is valuable, don't put it in a list. Don't even say the words.”

“But whether or not you are here, you are here—because these words are for you, and they wouldn't exist if you weren't here in some way.”

“Stay with me." As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him whisper a word back, but I don't quite catch it.”

“I don't trust words. I trust pictures.”

“I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.”

“Vampire? Such a provocative word, wrapped in too many clichés and girly novels.”

“I wish the first word I ever said was the word "quote," so right before I die I could say "unquote."”

“I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.”

“You have to trust the words. They do not create anything more than themselves.”

“He said "cool" like I say a Spanish word when I'm not sure of the pronunciation.”

“Busy' is another word for 'asshole'. 'Asshole' is another word for the guy you're dating.”

“Griddle cakes, pancakes, hot cakes, flapjacks: why are there four names for grilled batter and only one word for love?”

“A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.”

“Hark, his hands the lyre explore!
Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er
Scatters from her pictured urn
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.”

“All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.”

“He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.”

“I will meet you on the nape of your neck one day, on the surface of intention, word becoming act.
We will breathe into each other the high mountain tales, where the snows come from, where the waters begin.”
-In the yellow time of pollen”

“Did you know that there are over three hundred words for love in canine?”

“You cannot poison what is between us with your foul words. She is my light in the darkness and Johnny is my pathway ahead.”

“Words are like spices. Too many is worse than too few.”

“Why are there five syllables in the word “monosyllabic”?”

“Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.”

“Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.”

“A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.”

“There's a difference between the wordsand. And it's more than three words.”

“All of the life-changing awesome
words and pictures and ideas
inside your library are useless
without just one word outside
your library: Open.”

“There are in life a few moments so beautiful, that even words are a sort of profanity.”

“How can I find the words? Poets have taken them all and left me with nothing to say or do"
"Except to teach me for the first time what they meant.”

“The word I think of is precarious. I am struck by how precarious it all is. How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them.”

“The real me lives in words, not in what words mean.”

“Just those three words, said and meant. I love you.

They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer.

His fairy story.”

“It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for.”

“Take that, you scum-sucking snipes. Eat your words and your cruelty. May you drown in it and die. (Nick)”

“Tell me what you need."
"You," she said simply, that one word tearing to the very heart of him. "Just you.”

“Don't just read words,' he would tell her as he held up the latest story, 'devour them. Let the words create new worlds.”

“Don't you hear it? She asked & I shook my head no & then she started to dance & suddenly there was music everywhere & it went on for a very long time & when I finally found words all I could say was thank you.”

“THE LAST WORDS OF MAX VANDENBURG: You've done enough.”

“I have your word?”
“You trust my word?”
“You’re an idealistic fool. Of course.”

“Michael smiled at me a little. “You’re a good man, Harry. But you’re making the same mistake Nicodemus always has—and the same one Karrin did.” “What mistake?” “You all think the critical word in the phrase ‘Sword of Faith’ is ‘sword.”

“Words are sexier than flesh.”

“There are moments when mental overload can render words impossible.”

“You are talking crazy-person talk. Put your words in word places please.”

“The things she most wanted to tell him would lose their meaning the moment she put them into words.”

“Excuse me, Bane?" said Roderick Morgenstern. "Are you attending?"
"I'm so sorry," Magnus said politely. "Somebody incredibly attractive just came into the room, and I ceased to pay attention to a word you were saying.”

“He joked while Dali cut him, mangling the words with his monstrous jaws, snarled with a pretended rage and dramatically promised to "kirrrl youraaalll for this!”

“The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence; the best opens up an exchange that need never end.”

“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”

“I must always forget how one word is able to pick out another, to manner another, until I have got something I might have said… but did not.”

“Impulsively, I lean forward and kiss him, stopping his word. This is probably overdue anyway since he’s right, we are supposed to be madly in love.”

“Samuel Beckett once said, "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."
… On the other hand, he SAID it.”

“Shigure: "That's lovely. She’s so… how shall I say it? By putting it into words I'm afraid the nobility of it all would only be obscured."
Yuki: "Of what?"
Shigure: "You know, she's so spunky!"
Kyo: "You sick bastard!”

“They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.”

“Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.”

“It’s less the words they say than those they leave unsaid that split old friends apart.”

“From our first babblings to our last word,
we make but one statement, and that is our life.”

“But love, I've come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.”

“Silence is better than unmeaning words.”

“A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”

“Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word, not meaning sentimentality, but a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.”

“The book smelled dusty and old but also carried a sweet tang, a hint of something inviting. She opened to the first page and started to read, pronouncing the words in a reverent whisper.”

“They were words that came out of nothing, but they seemed to him somehow significant. He muttered them over again.”

“I love you is an interesting phrase, in that apparently small alterations–taking away the I, adding a word like lots or loads–render it meaningless.”

“You can kill a man with those words.
No gun.
No bullets.
Just words and a girl.”

“You can have the other words — chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace.”

“The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.”

“She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.”

“Words, words. They're all we have to go on.”

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”

“She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.”

“A man without words is a man without thought.”

“LIBERTY!
FREEDOM!
DEMOCRACY!
True anyhow no matter how many
Liars use those words.”

“It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.”

“You know how teachers tell you the magic word is 'please'? That's not true. The magic word is 'puke'. It will get you out of class faster than anything else.”