17 Quotes by Alena Graedon

Words don’t always work. Sometimes they come up short. Conversations can lead to conflict. There are failures of diplomacy. Some differences, for all the talk in the world, remain irreconcilable. People make empty promises, go back on their word, say things they don’t believe. But connection, with ourselves and others, is the only way we can live.

Language may have limits. But it isn’t just a dim likeness in a mirror. Yes, gestures, glances, touches, taps on walls mean something. So do silences. But sometimes the word is the thing. The bridge. Sometimes we only know what we feel once it’s been said. Words may be daughters of the earth instead of heaven. But they’re not dim. And even in the faintest shimmer, there is light.

We both think love (and language) are interesting but taffylike diversions: soft, simple, perhaps a little salty. If either one takes over your life, you're an ass.

One single word – like EMERGENCY, or love – can revise a whole night. A whole life.

To create a word is simple. But to create a world – to think – that’s hard.

I think this had to do with the vintage of his family's money: the older the gold, the less shiny it tends to be.

Yes. Well, as I said, love can haunt us, and make us do strange things.

Words, then, are born of worlds. But they also take us places we can’t go: Constantinople and Mars, Valhalla, the Planet of the Apes. Language comes from what we’ve seen, touched, loved, lost. And it uses knowable things to give us glimpses of what’s not. The Word, after all, is God.