Language Quote by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

“one sign of a writer’s potential is his especially sharp ear—and eye—for language.”

— John Gardner

The bad novelist constructs his characters; he directs them and makes them speak. The true novelist listens to them and watches them act; he…

— Andre Gide

“There is only one trait that marks the writer. He is always watching. It's a kind of trick of the mind and he is…

— Morley Callaghan

The narrators get into trouble and make fools of themselves with their perversely impulsive fondlings of the language. These people have retreated from the…

— Gary Lutz

A writers desire to write can only have come from previous experience of literature, and he'll start by imitating whatever he's read, which usually…

— Northrop Frye

“The job of the writer is to change the way the reader sees the world.”

— after Richard Ford

… the truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element…

— Derek Walcott

A good writer refuses to be socialized. He insists on his own version of things, his own consciousness. And by doing so he draws…

— Bill Barich

“A sensible person does not read a novel as a task. He reads it as a diversion. He is prepared to interest himself in…

— W. Somerset Maugham

“Writers are not just writers, they are creators of worlds, sculptors of the mind, they are architects of language.”

— Jamie L. Harding

“As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between language and…

— Arundhati Roy

“I think the revolutionary role of a writer is to make language that makes coalition possible, language that makes us see things in a…

— Gloria Steinem Lynn Gilbert