“When men learnt to talk in the beginning of the civilised word they used language not as a means of communication alone but as a means of excluding others--using it as a way of setting themselves apart and shutting out strangers.”
“Do you know, by the way, that German is the only language in the world that has a word for ‘pleasure derived from the misfortune of others’? Schadenfreude.”
“Eating words and listening to them rumbling in the gut is how a writer learns the acid and alkali of language. It is a process at the same time physical and intellectual. The writer has to hear language until she develops perfect pitch, but she also has to feel language, to know it sweat and dry. The writer finds the words are visceral, and when she can eat them, wear them, and enter them like tunnels she discovers the alleged separation between word and meaning between writer and word is theoretical.”
“Music is the great unifier. It doesn’t matter which country you’re in or what language is being spoken, the fans just magically seem to get it. They share a common goal of love and celebration for the purity of magnificence and brilliance that has been created by the artist. It’s transcendent. It’s inspiration. It’s raw emotion. It’s communication – a perfect marriage of notes, harmonies, lyrics and melodies. It’s the beauty within the beast.”
“Every writer dreams of a perfect language. Every writer dreams of a language that obeys, that comes to heel. For some this language is spare and pure, pared down to reveal essential truths without ornament or obfuscation. For others it is devilish and twisting, folding back over itself to create layers of meaning, shades of nuance. A language that will survive through the ages. A language that will crack open the heart of readers like a hazelnut.”
“Her attachment to language was earthy, physical, and immediate. Pretty words you could eat.”
“They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a word is worth a million pictures. A billion. As many as there are people who know the word. Each has their own picture, their own meaning of it, in their heads. It s theirs. It s unique. And yet they share it with everyone else. And every time they use a word, a single word, they contribute to the creation of the soul of us all.”
“... since the history of words is a mainspring of our intellectual and emotional character.”
“Language, because it is imperfect, cannot encompass experience in its raw and primal condition. To verbalize emotion and action is to decrease their impact.”
“He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working. His (Korean) friends nod and smile and eat the food they ve taken from tins and say no pleasantly.”
“The language looks rather different when you look at a lot of it at once.”
“I should think a dead language would be rather boring, socially speaking.”
“A boy trying out a man s language.”
“I had a dream about you last night... we tried to joke but neither could make any sense. We realized that puns are present in every language, though not shared by any of them.”
“Wow, I miss Latin. So much fun - all those exciting verbs that don t come unit the end of the sentence. It s like a movie trailer for language.”
“Sometimes we speak different languages, but our hearts are the same.”
“I m online, therefore I am.”