“Words are pretty, but anyone can talk. Pay attention to the people who perform.” — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
I'm a language-oriented writer who proceeds sentence by sentence. — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care. — Norman Cousins Copy Share Image
I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do. — Gertrude Stein Copy Share Image
Oftentimes an originator of new language forms is called 'pretentious' by jealous talents. But it ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha… — Jack Kerouac Copy Share Image
The language is the hardest thing. My technical Russian is much better than my conversational Russian, and it has to be good… — Shannon Walker Copy Share Image
The assumption that rigidly rejecting words and phrases that have existed for centuries will have much impact on public attitudes is rather… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“Transitioning from their first language to English before they have a firm grasp of their first language, usually by the end of… — Terry Marselle Copy Share Image
The noun phrase straw man, now used as a compound adjective as in 'straw-man device, technique or issue,' was popularized in American… — William Safire Copy Share Image
The way a source strains toward the light, toward the air. Its laboring work, its effort, its black passageways like despair. That’s… — Anna Kamienska Copy Share Image
“Words are fossilized butterfly wings, pretty to look at sometimes, but only good for Museums. I want to miserably burn down the… — Jeremiah Walton Copy Share Image
The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable… — Byron White Copy Share Image
“One danger zone is dialogue ... At the moment of ultimate showing, we writers get nervous. ... We allow characters to tell… — Tin House Books Copy Share Image
“Class was what formed you, but didn’t travel to other cultures – it became invisible abroad. In foreign places, you were singled… — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share Image
People often say Beckett is difficult or bleak, but engaging with it is the most life-affirming, uplifting thing. It's his use of… — Adrian Dunbar Copy Share Image
“There was only one huge world with no back to it A world like a sun One day it broke into tiny… — Octavio Paz Copy Share Image
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in… — Robert Greene Copy Share Image
My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity; the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts; inability to… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Lacan, as we have seen in our discussion of Freud, regards the unconscious as structured like a language. This is not only… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Language is one of the fundamental principles of human understanding. It is the way we interact with each other and how we… — Linus Torvalds Copy Share Image
