Language Quotes
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Elizabeth, Lady C, claims to be writing at the limits of language. Would it not be insulting to her if I were diligently to follow after her, explaining what she means but is not smart enough to say?
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We should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own culture.
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Every Englishman is an average Englishman: it is a national characteristic.
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Most Englishmen are convinced that God is an Englishman, probably educated at Eton.
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Films, fiction, can encompass a whole global vision on a particular subject with any story, whatever it is. You can play the story in whatever country with whatever language in whatever style you want to tell the story in.
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It is quite common to meet people that live a few kilometers away from Mexico and that have never been there. We need to revive on many levels an illustrious desire to get to know the world, to learn another language, to understand and create empathy with people that live a few kilometers away from us. It's never late to do this.
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Music is its own language - if you don't speak it, it's hard to say what you're trying to do.
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The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
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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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Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone.
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With Lille, we could have gone to the South of France, and people wouldn't have recognised us. But at Chelsea, the players are at another level. Everything has changed – the language, the country – but it is up to me to adapt.
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There were seven men, but just one language. They also moved as one and ate one meal a day and slept in the same bed and knew the same women with whom they'd made the same child. They worked for the same firm as the father. They were the future.
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Music is a language.
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I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language.
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Writers, particularly poets, always feel exiled in some way - people who don't exactly feel at home, so they try to find a home in language.
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What I want is for people to really grab hold of language and not be nervous about it. 'The Word Spy' is all about diving in and playing with words.
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If you're going to learn a new language, you can't try to be perfect. You'll stop yourself from talking. You just have to let go.
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My brother and I had many games. We were inseparable. We had a little team going on between us. We had even a language that was kind of like pig latin. So we'd speak in the language. It's called Op.
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I became aware that all sounds can make meaningful language.
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It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do?
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Journalism students need to understand it and need a solid background in the liberal arts, in sociology, economics, literature and language, because they won't get it later on.
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All language is but a poor translation.
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I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.
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My professional and human obsession is the nature of language, and my best relationships are with other writers. In many ways, I know George Eliot better than I know my husband.
