quotations about words
In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
In the increasingly convincing darkness
The words become palpable, like a fruit
That is too beautiful to eat.
JOHN ASHBERY
Houseboat Poems
Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
"Barrow and Newton", Dialogues of Literary Men
Our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people derive from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
Always having to have the last word is a bad trait. Pisses people off.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
The Lunatic Cafe
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
ELIE WIESEL
attributed, The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom
Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?
JAMES JOYCE
"The Dead", Dubliners
Sometimes you want to say things, and you're missing an idea to make them with, and missing a word to make the idea with. In the beginning was the word. That's how somebody tried to explain it once. Until something is named, it doesn't exist.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Babel-17
What lives in words is what words were needed to learn.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"To Speech"
Words are the light and sound of our existence, the heat lightning by which the night is illuminated.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
Theirs, too, is the word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"Notes on an Elizabethan Play", The Common Reader
God's linguistic being is the word. All human language is only reflection of the word in name. Name is no closer to the word than knowledge to creation. The infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytical in nature in comparison to the absolutely unlimited and creative infinity of the divine word.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Reflections
The poet cannot invent new words every time, of course. He uses the words of the tribe. But the handling of the word, the accent, a new articulation, renew them.
EUGENE IONESCO
Present Past / Past Present
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Investigations
The pressed oil of words can blaze up into music, into image, into the heart and mind's knowledge. The lit and shadowed places within us can be warmed.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
With words, we can negotiate deals. With words, we can enter into the covenant of marriage. With words, we can declare war. Words reveal our intent and purpose.
RON WOOD
"Words are weapons", Meridian Star, January 23, 2016
Words come reluctantly to me, they clatter in my mouth and tumble out heavily like stones.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
My method is to find a word with a gesture.
CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN
An Evolution in Aphorisms
How charming it is that there are words and sounds: are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things eternally separated?
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra