Casey Miller (Casey Geddes Miller) Quotes
Our native language is like a second skin, so much a part of us we resist the idea that it is constantly changing, constantly being renewed.
Quotes to Explore
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At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English language.
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If you love things or ideas or people that contradict each other, you have to be prepared to fight for every square inch of intellectual real estate you occupy.
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Yiddish, originally, in Eastern Europe was considered the language of children, of the illiterate, of women. And 500 years later, by the 19th century, by the 18th century, writers realized that, in order to communicate with the masses, they could no longer write in Hebrew. They needed to write in Yiddish, the language of the population.
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I like using animals because they help suspend my reader's disbelief. We have certain ideas about dentists. We don't have many ideas about rhinoceros dentists.
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My office in Milan is in an old factory. I have all my companies here, including Italia Independent and Independent Ideas.
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Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.
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I think pop music is a great place to get new ideas across.
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The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it - what is said.
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If only I could step back into the time of old movies, if only I could be given the opportunity to do what Katharine Hepburn did or what Rosalind Russell did. Those kinds of characters, that kind of patter, that kind of language, that kind of script. They don't exist any more.
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Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
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I keep thinking, we teach children to use language to solve their disputes. We teach them not to hit and fight and bite. Then look what adults do!
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The relations between rhetoric and ethics are disturbing: the ease with which language can be twisted is worrisome, and the fact that our minds accept these perverse games so docilely is no less cause for concern.
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The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to somebody and make a pass. You couldn't do that in the 1950s if you were gay. There were secret handshakes, a secret language. There was nowhere you could go to be romantic outside of people's houses.
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You used to be able to just call people. You didn't have to be on someone's calendar to have a phone conversation. The telephone was an important and valuable domain of communication, both for casual, friendly chats and for professional exchanges of ideas and information. But no more.
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When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.
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No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.
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I've never been a fan of directors who clutter a piece with all sorts of crazy preconceptions or weird ideas.
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I carry a small spiral notebook with me at all times and have been doing this for many years. There's a shoe box in my closet filled with these notebooks, each riddled with notes and impressions, ideas, schemes, and soup recipes.
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Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they'll say, 'God, he said exactly what I was thinking.' And when they begin to respect you, they'll follow you to the death.
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Old ideas from an old man about an old vision of Europe.
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Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.
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[A]s if it were not the masterful will which subjugates the forces of nature to be the genii of the lamp... that forces a life-thought into a pregnant word or phrase, and sends it ringing through the ages!
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I want the ability to monitor high-tech communications among far-flung terrorists. I want to be able to have our people learn their plans before they strike. That's the key.
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Our native language is like a second skin, so much a part of us we resist the idea that it is constantly changing, constantly being renewed.
