Quotes about wording
page 26

“Sure baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next few weeks that was all I heard––mañana a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Love, Baby

“Annabeth pressed her lips to Percy’s ear. “I love you.”
She wasn’t sure he could hear her—but if they died, she wanted those to be her last words.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Love

“The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.”

Muriel Spark book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Education, Soul

“The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.”

Henry James book The Wings of the Dove

Source: The Wings of the Dove

Women, Books, Reading

“The baby understands that its mother loves it. […] Words have their origin in baby talk, so words have their origin in love.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Source: First Snow on Fuji

Love, Understanding, Baby

“The culture of Rome just doesn't match the culture of Yoga, not as far as I can see. In fact, I've decided that Rome and Yoga don't have anything in common at all. Except for the way they both kind of remind you of the word toga.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Way

“Holy [Insert your choice of a swear word here]," said Fang stunned.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

World, Peace, Way, Learning

“Can I…I mean, do you mind if I sleep up here? If you don't, I, um, understand. I just—"
"Yes." The word bolted out of me. "Yes, please. Maybe I'll be able to sleep if you're here.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Jealousy

Understanding, Sleep

“It's an illusion I've noticed before-- words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It only lasts while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or pen, the pistons fall lifeless again.”

Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire

Source: Rose Under Fire

“For the deeds of a man, not the words of a prophecy, are what shape his destiny.”

Lloyd Alexander book The High King

Source: The High King

“Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

Source: Ulysses by James Joyce

Men, Sadness

“Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit. All that exists is a magnificent interweaving, vast and reciprocal.”

Michel Houellebecq book Atomised

Source: Atomised

Evil

“We need to be together."
"Why?" I asked softly. The word was carried away on the wind, but he heard.
"Because I want you."
I gave him a sad smile, wondering if we'd meet again in the land of the dead. "Wrong answer," I told him.
I let go”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Sadness, Smile, Dead

“Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic. Do not defend God's word, but testify to it. Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer”

Eric Metaxas (1963) American journalist

Source: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

God

“Don't use such strong words. It'll only make you look weak.”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 01

Strong

“A word grows to a thought – a thought to an idea – an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveler loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.”

Beryl Markham book West with the Night

Source: West with the Night

Travel, Idea, Change

“The other day I was playing Scrabble. I saw that I could close the space in D-E- -Y. I had an N and an F. Which do you think I chose? What was the word I made?”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

Source: The Collected Stories

Thinking

“Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Soul

“Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

Source: According to the Rolling Stones

Music

“And now - Plato's words mock me in the shadows on the ledge behind the flames: '… the men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

Men

“When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.”

Euripidés Orestes

Source: Orestes (408 BC), l. 907

Evil

“Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us. If we were no longer here, words would lose their whole function. They would end up as words that are never spoken, and words that aren't spoken are no longer words.”

Haruki Murakami book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

“Tomorrow. The word hangs in the air for a moment, both a promise and a threat. Then it floats away like a paper boat, taken from her by the water licking at her ankles.”

Thrity Umrigar book The Space Between Us

Source: The Space Between Us

Water

“In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?”

James Joyce book The Dead

Source: The Dead

“I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss

“There is no such thing as a perfect, ideal, or 'correct' translation. A translator is always trying to extend his knowledge and improve his means of expression; he is always pursuing facts and words.”

Peter Newmark (1916–2011) English translation scholar

Source: Manual De Traduccion / A Textbook of Translation

Knowledge, Perfection

“Happy Birthday."
Adrian came to a sudden halt. The words were soft and small, spoken tentatively, but easily discerned by vampire ears. Slowly, he turned around and found Jill Mastrano standing shyly before him.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Adrian's Lost Chapter

Happiness, Birthday

“Be good to your work, your word, and your friend.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.”

Steven Millhauser (1943) American novelist and short story writer

“She says people ought to learn to live like them, with the body abandoned in a wilderness, and in the mind the memory of a single kiss, a single word, a single look to stand for a whole love.”

Marguerite Duras book Blue Eyes, Black Hair

Source: Blue Eyes, Black Hair

Love, People, Kiss, Learning

“I love you and I always will and I am sorry. What a useless word.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Garden of Eden

Source: The Garden of Eden

Love

“Thus we use our supposed "knowledge" of others to speak on their behalf, and condemn them for their words we ourselves put in their silent mouths.”

Margaret George (1943) American writer

Source: The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers

Knowledge

“The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy.”

Florence Scovel Shinn (1871–1940) American writer

The Game of Life and How to Play It https://archive.org/details/gameoflifehowtop00shin (1925)

Life, Game

“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power… Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Life, Art

“Not an insult sweetie. That was a thirteen word kiss.”

Dean Koontz book Your Heart Belongs to Me

Source: Your Heart Belongs to Me

Kiss

“When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. ‘Mythomania’ is the word for it.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

People, Lie

“We are coming up on the Sumerian apokalypsi–. (Artemis)
I don’t think they use that word. (Kat)
Who cares what word they use? End of the world is end of the world regardless of whatever term you use for it! (Artemis)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

World, Thinking

“Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.”

Julio Cortázar book Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Source: Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Reality

“It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what `tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline

God

“Offended people still may experience miracles, words of utterance, strong preaching, and healing in their lives. But these are gifts of the Spirit, not fruits. We will be judged according to fruit, not gifting. A gift is given. Fruit is cultivated.”

John Bevere (1959) American author

Source: The Bait Of Satan: Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense

People, Strong

“people's emotions are rarely put into words, far more often they are expressed through other cues.
the key to intuiting another's feelings is in the ability to read nonverbal channels, tone of voice, gesture, facial expression and the like”

Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist

Source: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

People, Feeling, Reading

“In the dictionary, next to the word stress, there is a picture of a midsize mutant stuck inside a dog crate, wondering if her destiny is to be killed or to save the world. Okay, not really. But there should be.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

World, Dogs

“All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears - of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, of speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words "Some Assembly Required".”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Fear

“Be kind to everyone - you don't know what cross they're bearing and how sweet that kind word might ring.”

Ann B. Ross American writer

Source: Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind

“Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: I. Asimov

Life, Business

“Words are where most change begins.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Change

“A deserted library in the morning - there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Idea

“There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

“When she is happy, she can't stop talking, when she is sad she doesn't say a word.”

Ann Brashares book Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Happiness, Sadness, Sad

“Love is only a word, until someone arrives to give it meaning.
Don't give up. Remember, it's always the last key on the key ring that opens the door.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Love

“Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

page 323
Source: A Million Little Pieces (2003)

Heart

“Love is fragile -- she was thinking -- but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said. The new love-words, the tenderness learned, and treasured up for the next lover.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book May Day

Source: May Day

Love, Lovers, Thinking, Learning

“Life's disappointments are harder to take when you don't know any swear words.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Life, Disappointment

“Alone. It's one of those small words that means entirely too much. Like fear. Or trust.”

Jim Butcher book Fool Moon

Source: Fool Moon

Fear

“a good book
can make an almost
impossible
existence,
liveable

( from 'the luck of the word' )”

Charles Bukowski book Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Source: Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Books

“No, I don't think I could fall in love with him, handsome though he is, because I don't accept any of that huff he gives me about my great beauty and all that. I'd have to trust a man's words before I could love him. I think.”

Sherwood Smith (1951) American fantasy and science fiction writer

Source: Court Duel

Love, Beauty, Thinking

“In other words, our opinions and our thoughts and feelings, anything we experience, need not define us forever.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride

Source: The Longest Ride

Feeling

“I don't want to do the type of writing where I recite biography, parentage and education. I want to rise up from the words on the page and do something, hurt someone.”

Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis

Source: Cosmopolis

Education, Hurt

“Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

III, 7
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book III

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

On being informed that Faulkner had said that Hemingway "had never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary." Pt. 1, Ch. 4
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Thinking

“There is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Hunger, Truth, Search

“If we all were judged according to the consequences
Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention
And beyond our limited understanding
Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Understanding

“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Forgetting

“.

Those mornings when we kiss and surrender for an hour before we say a single word.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Kiss

“Cofishes-other fish in a group, coworkers, cohorts, etc. Shut up, it's a word.”

Christopher Moore book Fool

Source: Fool

Fish

“The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock—shock is a worn-out word—but astonish.”

Terry Southern (1924–1995) American author

“I am starting to get tired of relying on words.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation.”

Lynne Truss (1955) British writer

Source: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Way, Drawing

“When I dream, I dream of him. For several nights now he’s come to me, waving from a distant shore as if he’s been waiting patiently for me to arrive. He doesn’t utter a word, but his smile says everything: I’ve missed you.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Smile, Dreams, Distant, Waiting

“How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.”

Theodore Dreiser book Sister Carrie

Source: Sister Carrie

“Should, is the worst word
in the English language. People always think things "should" be a certain way, and when they're
not, they're disappointed.”

Candace Bushnell book Summer and the City

Source: Summer and the City

People, Disappointment, Way, Thinking

“Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Music, Feeling

“Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart”

Norman Mailer The Gospel According to the Son

Source: The Gospel According to the Son

Heart

“I never met a word I didn't love”

Gail Carson Levine (1947) American writer

Love

“My final word: don't follow your dreams… chase them. With a stick, or a shovel, or whatever you have handy. Get that [bleep]ing dream!”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Dreams

“But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

Loneliness

“Was this what it meant to love someone? That any burden was a burden shared, that they could give you comfort with a word or a touch?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Love

“I'm a man of few words."
"If you read more, you might have a larger vocabulary.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Reading

“My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Silence

“Word of advice. These have a kick, so don’t suck too hard—”
Holy hypoxia, Batman.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Reborn

“Love and freedom are such hideous words. So many cruelties have been done in their name.”

Joseph O`Connor (1916–2001) Anglo-Irish actor and playwright

Source: Star of the Sea

Love, Freedom

“Still, it would have been great, just once, to have a man stare at her with total adoration. To have him be… enthralled. Yes, that was the word. She would have loved for a man to be enthralled by her.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Eternal

Source: Lover Eternal

Love

“Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.”

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: The Well of Lost Plots

Books

“Good. Show me a man who thinks that he knows what 'good' is, and I will probably be able to show you a horror of a person. Show me a person who really knows what 'good' is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.”

Idries Shah book Caravan of Dreams

Source: Caravan of Dreams

Thinking, Personality

“He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

God

“I was only photographing in words the reality of it all.”

Charles Bukowski book Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Source: Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Reality

“Peeta" I said "Stay with me"

I heard him say one word before the drigs pulled me under, I realised later that what he said was 'always”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“How many times had those awful words - "I know what I'm doing" - been uttered throughout history as prelude to disaster?”

Christopher Buckley Supreme Courtship

Source: Supreme Courtship

History, Time

“Palindrome as well. My sister's name is Hannah. Father liked word games. He was fourteen times World Scrabble Champion. When he died, we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score.”

Jasper Fforde book The Big Over Easy

Source: The Big Over Easy

World, Game, Sister, Time

“Tell me about our legal issues. And use small words. I don't like to think at this hour of the morning. It hurts."

~Leo to Merripen”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Married By Morning

Thinking, Hurt

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes indeed.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Variant: Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
Source: A Poetry Handbook

Life