Quotes about wording
page 21

“But what I really want is to just swim around in a warm baby pool of these friends, jump in their dry leaf pile-to rub them all over myself, without words and clothes.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Baby, Clothes

“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?”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

Source: A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

War, Help

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Way, Suffering

“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?”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

People, 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.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Feeling, Forgetting

“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.”

Nicole Krauss book Great House

Source: Great House

Smile, 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.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

Memory, Past

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

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Quest

Source: Assassin's Quest

Thinking

“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.”

Georges Bataille book The Solar Anus

The Solar Anus (1927)

Life, World, Effort, Water

“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."”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

On being gay
Stephen Fry actually admitted this was a quote from a friend, not himself. (Moab Is My Washpot)
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

Time

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

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Love

“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.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Love, 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.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 5.
Context: I resolved passionately to reach the spiritual causes of phenomena, and to dominate the material world which I detested by their means. 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.

Sense, Personality

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

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

Freedom

“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.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

“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!”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Books, Time, Reading

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

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Source: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

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

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Sense, Change

“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.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Love, Happiness, Thinking

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

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

“Fight your battles with words, not fists”

Ann M. Martin (1955) American writer of children's literature

Fight

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

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Fear

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Table-Talk (1857)

Heart, Hurtful

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

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

“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.”

Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948) British composer

Love, Pain, World, Change

“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.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Guy, Painting

“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.”

Douglas Coupland Hey Nostradamus!

Source: Hey Nostradamus! (2003)

“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.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

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.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Sleep

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

Gilles Peress (1946) French photojournalist

“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.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Music

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

Matt Haig book The Radleys

Source: The Radleys

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

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

When the Leaves Blow Away (2006), I Still Have a Pony (2007)

Quotes

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

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

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

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

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

Kelley Armstrong book The Summoning

Source: The Summoning

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

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Guy, Business

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

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

Source: Napalm & Silly Putty

Love

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

Frances Mayes book Under the Tuscan Sun

Source: Under the Tuscan Sun

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

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

III. 3, Line 2 <br class="br"> The Progress of Poesy http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?textpppo (1754) <br class="br">Source: Selected Poems

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

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

Source: All I Want is a Warm Bed and a Kind Word and Unlimited Power: Even More Brilliant Thoughts

“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.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Game, Reality, Memory

“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”

Luke Davies (1962) Australian writer

Mountain, Water, Time

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

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Love

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

Juliet Marillier book Son of the Shadows

Source: Son of the Shadows

Light

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

Joan Aiken (1924–2004) English fiction writer

Source: The Last Slice of Rainbow and Other Stories

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

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

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

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Truth, Universe

“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.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Source: Light in August

Courage, Time

“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.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Other Lyrics
Source: "The Favorite Game"
Context: Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. 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.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

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

Mo Willems (1968) American children's illustrator and writer

Life, Idea, Change

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

Diana Palmer (1946) American romance novelist

Life, Beauty

“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.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Busman's Honeymoon

Source: Busman's Honeymoon

Time

“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.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Faith, Thinking, Strong

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

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

“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.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Love

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

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

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

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

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

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Rush

Tear, Heart

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

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Unfair Godmother

World, Reading

“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.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Music, Time, Dance

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

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

The Book Thief

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

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

Fools

“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.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

Faith, Smile, Thinking

“Words are sexier than flesh.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

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

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

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

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Time of Your Life

Personality

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

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“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.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“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!”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Rage

“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.”

Rebecca Solnit book Men Explain Things To Me

Source: Men Explain Things to Me

Silence

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

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Source: Little Foxes (1865), Ch. 3.
Source: Little Foxes: Or, the Insignificant Little Habits Which Mar Domestic Happiness

Tear, Sad, Depressing, Hurtful

“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.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: The Complete Poems

Forgetting

“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.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Love, Kiss

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

Art Spiegelman (1948) cartoonist from the United States

Source: Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began

Silence

“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!”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 1

Love

“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.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

People

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

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

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

Frederick Buechner book Godric

Source: Godric (1980)

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

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Letter

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.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Wedding

Wilson Lewis, Chapter 4, p. 63
Source: 2000s, The Wedding (2003)

Love, Understanding

“Silence is better than unmeaning words.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Encyclopaedia Americana (1832) Vol. X, p. 445 edited by Francis Lieber, E. Wigglesworth, and Thomas Gamaliel Bradford

Silence

“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.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Question

“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.”

Maya Angelou book Mom & Me & Mom

Source: Mom & Me & Mom

Love, Star, Strong

“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.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Books, Reading

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

Yasunari Kawabata book The Sound of the Mountain

Source: The Sound of the Mountain

“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.”

David Nicholls book Us

Source: Us

Love

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

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Variant: She soon says, "You're my best friend, Ed."
You can kill a man with those words.
No gun.
No bullets.
Just words and a girl.
Source: I Am the Messenger

Girl

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

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Sand Dabs, Five"
Winter Hours (1999)
Context: You can have the other words — chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.

Chance