2,489 Quotes About Language

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.

To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.

Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.

She wanted to hold foreign syllables like mints on her tongue until they dissolved into fluency.

We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.

...to swear with a ferocity that can only be described as a talent.

The fact that Iam writing to youin Englishalready falsifies what Iwanted to tell you.My subject:how to explain to you that Idon't belong to Englishthough I belong nowhere else

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.

If this hast been done to language, I fear to know the fate of all else.