“When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I m trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It s a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. I was attacked by a bear! to Goddamn bear tried to kill me! to That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person! and so on.”
“Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.”
“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”
“there is [...] a last even of last times of saying if you do not love me I shall not be loved if I do not love you I shall not love”
“Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write”
“A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies that have moulded them”
“Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.”
“You don’t realise how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense.”
“I don t understand why people never say what they mean. It s like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn t a native English speaker get the picture, so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?)”
“We think of English as a fortress to be defended, but a better analogy is to think of English as a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned electrical sockets. We dress it in fancy clothes and tell it to behave, and it comes home with its underwear on its head and wearing someone else s socks. As English grows, it lives its own life, and this is right and healthy. Sometimes English does exactly what we think it should; sometimes it goes places we don t like and thrives there in spite of all our worrying. We can tell it to clean itself up and act more like Latin; we can throw tantrums and start learning French instead. But we will never really be the boss of it. And that s why it flourishes.”
“Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true.”
“لا توجد أي دولة في العالم انطلقت في المجال التكنولوجي دون الاعتماد على اللغة الأم.”
“Yes, of course, there s something fishy about describing people s feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. It s really a machine for making falsehoods. When we really speak the truth, words are insufficient. Almost everything except things like pass the gravy is a lie of a sort. And that being the case, I shall shut up. Oh, and... pass the gravy.”
“When a man is in love how can he use old words? Should a woman desiring her lover lie down with grammarians and linguists? I said nothing to the woman I loved but gathered love s adjectives into a suitcase and fled from all languages.”
“With every fragment of rock that fall from me, I can hear the voice of Marianne Engle. I love you. Aishiteru. Ego amo te. Ti amo. Eg elska pig. Ich liebe dich. It is moving across time, coming to me in every language of the world, and it sounds like pure love.”
“S mimasen, Alyss said repeatedly as they brushed against passerby. What does that mean? Will asked as they reached a stretch of street bare of any other pedestrians. He was impressed by Alyss s grasp of the local language. It means pardon me, Alyss replied, but then a shadow of doubt crossed her face. At least, I hope it does. Maybe I m saying you have the manners of a fat, rancid sow.”
“The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.”