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e5701e1 "Of course the activists--not those whose thinking had become rigid, but those whose approach to revolution was imaginatively anarchic--had long ago grasped the reality which still eluded the press: we were seeing something important. We were seeing the desperate attempt of a handful of pathetically unequipped children to create a community in a social vacuum. Once we had seen these children, Ave could no longer overlook the vacuum, no longer pretend that the society's atomization could be reversed. This was not a traditional generational rebellion. At some point between 1945 and 1967 we had somehow neglected to tell these children the rules of the game we happened to be playing. Maybe we had stopped believing in the rules ourselves, maybe we were having a failure of nerve about the game. Maybe there were just too few people around to do the telling. These were children who grew up cut loose from the web of cousins and great-aunts and family doctors and lifelong neighbors who had traditionally suggested and enforced the society's values. They are children who have moved around a lot, San Jose, Chula Vista, here. They are less in rebellion against the society than ignorant of it, able only to feed back certain of its most publicized self-doubts, Vietnam, Saran-Wrap, diet pills, the Bomb. They feed back exactly what is given them. Because they do not believe in words--words are for "typeheads," Chester Anderson tells them, and a thought which needs words is just one more of those ego trips--their only proficient vocabulary is in the society's platitudes. As it happens I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language, and I am not optimistic about children who will settle for saying, to indicate that their mother and father do not live together, that they come from "a broken home." They are sixteen, fifteen, fourteen years old, younger all the time, an army of children waiting to be given the words." youth family language Joan Didion
dc36301 A local phrase book, entitled , has the following handy expressions. In the section 'On the Way to the Hotel': 'Let's Mutilate US Imperialism!' In the section 'Word Order': 'Yankees are wolves in human shape--Yankees / in human shape / wolves / are.' In the section 'Farewell Talk': 'The US Imperialists are the sworn enemy of the Korean people.' Not that the book is all like this--the section 'At the Hospital' has the term ('I have loose bowels'), and the section 'Our Foreign Friends Say' contains the Korean for 'President Kim Il Sung is the sun of mankind.' I wanted a spare copy of this phrase book to give to a friend, but found it was hard to come by. Perhaps this was a sign of a new rapprochement with the United States, or perhaps it was because, on page 46, in the section on the seasons, appear the words: ('We have a bumper harvest every year'). korean-language phrase-books famine north-korean-famine imperialism united-states language kim-il-sung north-korea propaganda Christopher Hitchens
4e91a1a "What you should do," she told Fat during one of his darker hours, "is get into studying the characteristics of the T-34." Fat asked what that was. It turned out that Sherri had read a book on Russion armor during World War Two. The T-34 tank had been the Soviet Union's salvation and thereby the salvation of all the Allied Powers- and, by extension, Horselover Fat's, since without the T-34 he would be speaking - not english or Latin or the koine - but German." language Philip K. Dick
fa05003 It sometimes seems to me that a pestilence has struck the human race in its most distinctive faculty - that is, the use of words. It is a plague afflicting language, revealing itself as a loss of cognition and immediacy, an automatism that tends to level out all expression into the most generic, anonymous, and abstract formulas, to dilute meaning, to blunt the edge of expressiveness, extinguishing the sparks that shoots out from the collision of words and new circumstances. words language Italo Calvino
8062a93 " ," she said in response to Hernandez's soft greeting. They had a pact to speak only Spanish to each other, with the result that their conversation never got beyond hello and good-bye." language Wallace Stegner
d20fdf6 But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and ofttimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too. words writing language storytelling Madeleine L'Engle
95dbb45 ,' he said. You had to wonder about the French, how they could make a simple 'sorry' sound so extreme and forlorn. humor forlorn sorry language french Kate Atkinson
c0024b5 "It had to be that Americans were taught, from elementary school, to always "say something" in class, no matter what. [...] They never said "I don't know". They said, instead, "I'm not sure," which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge. And they ambled, these Americans, they walked without rhythm. They avoided giving direct instructions: they did not say "Ask somebody upstairs"; they said "You might want to ask somebody upstairs". When you tripped and fell, when you choked, when misfortune befell you, they did not say "Sorry". They said "Are you OK?" when it was obvious that you were not. And when you said "Sorry" to them when they choked or tripped or encountered misfortune, they replied, eyes wide with surprise, "Oh, it's not your fault". And they overused the world "excited", a professor excited about a new book, a student excited about a class, a politician on TV excited about a law; it was altogether too much excitement." irony americans language Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
02848aa How is it that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul. understanding language Frances Hodgson Burnett
5d5177e "Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and listened in on private conversations, realising I'd gone an entire month without hearing anyone complaint that they were "stressed out"." native-tongue language David Sedaris
3a5f625 The irony of acquiring a foreign tongue is that I have amassed just enough cheap, serviceable words to fuel my desires and never, never enough lavish, imprudent ones to feed them. It is true, though, that there are some French words that I have picked up quickly, in fact, words that I cannot remember not knowing. As if I had been born with them in my mouth, as if they were seeds of a sour fruit that someone else ate and then ungraciously stuffed its remains into my mouth. language Monique Truong
8a0d0c5 Super 8 film is the language of silence. photography silence kodak-moment kodak cape-breton super-8 nova-scotia obscure seventies film language nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
4e17647 Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind. It was easier to turn her back on the two countries that could claim her in favor of one that had no claim whatsoever. immigration language Jhumpa Lahiri
597cb7a 'Your brain doesn't process language quite like other people. Why that is, I have no idea.' 'I have a superior brain?' 'Uh,' Eliot said, 'I wouldn't go that far.' lexicon mind-over-matter language Max Barry
50b9207 The poems that used to entrance me in the days of Miss Violence now struck me as overdone and sickly. --the archaic language of unrequited love. I was irritated with such words, which rendered the unhappy lovers--I could now see--faintly ridiculous, like poor moping Miss Violence herself. Soft-edged, blurry, soggy, like a bun fallen into the water. Nothing you'd want to touch, simile poetry the-blind-assassin margaret-atwood ridiculous language unrequited-love Margaret Atwood
ec82b9c The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, the pur that roared from the towers of Ilion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos. Pur: that one word contains for me the secret, the bright, terrible clarity of ancient Greek. How can I make you see it, this strange harsh light which pervades Homer's landscapes and illumines the dialogues of Plato, an alien light, inarticulable in our common tongue? Our shared language is a language of the intricate, the peculiar, the home of pumpkins and ragamuffins and bodkins and beer, the tongue of Ahab and Falstaff and Mrs. Gamp; and while I find it entirely suitable for reflections such as these, it fails me utterly when I attempt to describe in it what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end. In a certain sense, this was why I felt so close to the other in the Greek class. They, too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape, centuries dead; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home. It was why I admired Julian, and Henry in particular. Their reason, their very eyes and ears were fixed irrevocably in the confines of those stern and ancient rhythms - the world, in fact, was not their home, at least the world as I knew it - and far from being occasional visitors to this land which I myself knew only as an admiring tourist, they were pretty much its permanent residents, as permanent as I suppose it was possible for them to be. Ancient Greek is a difficult language, a very difficult language indeed, and it is eminently possible to study it all one's life and never be able to speak a word; but it makes me smile, even today, to think of Henry's calculated, formal English, the English of a well-educated foreigner, as compared with the marvelous fluency and self-assurance of his Greek - quick, eloquent, remarkably witty. It was always a wonder to me when I happened to hear him and Julian conversing in Greek, arguing and joking, as I never once heard either of them do in English; many times, I've seen Henry pick up the telephone with an irritable, cautious 'Hello,' and may I never forget the harsh and irresistible delight of his 'Khairei!' when Julian happened to be at the other end. language Donna Tartt
9b5ee42 I wanted to say a certain thing to a certain man, a certain true thing that had crept into my head. I opened my head, at the place provided, and proceeded to pronounce the true thing that lay languishing there--that is, proceeded to propel that trueness, that felicitous trularity, from its place inside my head out into world life. The certain man stood waiting to receive it. His face reflected an eager accepting-ness. Everything was right. I propelled, using my mind, my mouth, all my muscles. I propelled. I propelled and propelled. I felt trularity inside my head moving slowly through the passage provided (stained like the caves of Lascaux with garlic, antihistamines, Berloiz, a history, a history) toward its debut on the world stage. Past my teeth, with their little brown sweaters knitted of gin and cigar smoke, toward its leap to critical scrutiny. Past my lips, with their tendency to flake away in cold weather-- truth language speech Donald Barthelme
4c33efa "Gankis lifted an arm to point at the distant shale cliffs. "And in the face of it there were thousands of little holes, little what-you-call-'ems..." "Alcoves," Kennit supplied in an almost dreamy voice. "I call them alcoves, Gankis. As would you, if you could speak your own mother tongue." funny answer arm blank captain cliff query response title tongue witty word language point mother sarcastic question voice wit name sarcasm Robin Hobb
9ed98d1 One day the English language is going to perish. The easy spokenness of it will perish and go black and crumbly -- maybe -- and it will become a language like Latin that learned people learn. And scholars will write studies of and and and and and , and everyone will see that the sitcom is the great American art form. American poetry will perish with the language; the sitcoms, on the other hand, are new to human evolution and therefore will be less perishable. television poetry sitcom language Nicholson Baker
a18cde6 Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog. reading writing sound language speech Marshall McLuhan
3dce012 "They WERE walking alongside the road, they WERE hit by a car, and now they ARE dead. It doesn't work. Are is present tense. Dead is -- well, dead is past, isn't it? Present tense modifying past; being modifying non-being. Language, in this instance" -- and here Miriam makes a garbled noise in her throat-- "fails." death myla-goldberg language Myla Goldberg
6a165c3 ...only very few - only humans, as far as we know - achieve the second level of transcendent movement. Through this, the environment is de-restricted to become the world as an integral whole of manifest and latent elements. The second step is the work of language. This not only builds the 'house of being' - Heidegger took this phrase from Zarathustra's animals, which inform the convalescent: 'the house of being rebuilds itself eternally'; it is also the vehicle for the tendencies to run away from that house with which, by means of its inner surpluses, humans move towards the open. It need hardly be explained why the oldest parasite in the world, the world above, only appears with the second transcendence. immune-system transcendence language Peter Sloterdijk
fac1ad8 Since language is the only tool with which writers can reflect and shape a culture, it must be transformed into art. Language is not a limitation on the art of literature; it is a glorification. It has been the scaffolding inside which nations and philosophies have been built, and the language of literature has added the ornamental pediment by which the culture is remembered. literature writing legacy language writers E.L. Konigsburg
8d39bb7 "ll our tongues and cultures are constant shoplifters" from other tongues and cultures." hebrew language Amos Oz
6634ce7 Truth-telling is difficult because the varieties of untruth are so many and so well disguised. Lies are hard to identify when they come in the form of apparently innocuous imprecision, socially acceptable slippage, hyperbole masquerading as enthusiasm, or well-placed propaganda. These forms of falsehood are so common, and even so normal, in media-saturated, corporately controlled culture that truth often looks pale, understated, alarmist, rude, or indecisive by comparison. Flannery O'Connor's much-quoted line 'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd' has a certain prophetic force in the face of more and more commonly accepted facsimiles of truth - from PR to advertising claims to propaganda masquerading as news. writing truth marilyn-chandler-mcentyre language Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
8346aec "Uvi, tozi ,,diven ruski ezik", koito mi se struvashe, che vse me ochakva niak'de, ts'fti kato viarna prolet zad zalostena zdravo vrata, za koiato ot tolkova godini s'm pazil kliucha, se okaza nes'shchestvuvashch i zad tazi vrata niama nishcho osven ov'gleni p'nove i esenna beznadezhdna dalnina, a kliuch't v r'kata mi prilicha po-skoro na shperts. (...) Dvizheniiata na tialoto, grimasite, peizazhite, mornite, d'rveta, aromatite, d'zhdovete, stapiashchite se i prelivashchite se otten'tsi na prirodata, vsichko nezhno-choveshko (kolkoto i da e chudno!), a s'shcho i vsichko m'zhkarsko, grubo, sochno-tsinichno izliza na ruski ne po-zle, ako ne i po-dobre, otkolkoto na angliiski; no tolkova pris'shchite na angliiskiia izt'ncheni nedoml'vki, poeziiata na mis'lta, mignovenata iskra mezhdu s'vsem otvlechenite poniatiia, roivaneto na ednosrichni epiteti, vsichko tova, a s'shcho i vsichko, shcho se otnasia do tekhnikata, modite, sporta, estestvenite nauki i protivoestestvenite strasti -- na ruski izglezhda d'rveno, mnogoslovno i chesto otvratitelno v smis'l na stil i rit'm. Tozi raznoboi otraziava osnovnata razlika v istorichesko otnoshenie mezhdu zeleniia ruski literaturen ezik i zreliia kato razpuknala se smokinia angliiski: mezhdu genialniia, no oshche nedostat'chno obrazovan, a poniakoga dosta lishen ot vkus mladezh i mastitiia genii, koito s'chetava zapasite ot p'stro znanie s p'lnata svoboda na dukha. Svobodata na dukha! Tsialoto dikhanie na chovechestvoto se vmestva v tova s'chetanie ot dumi." -- translating russian language Vladimir Nabokov
4fd7694 Mr Hawkins said nothing; the Hawkins' domestic affairs were arranged upon the principle that Fanny supplied the talk and he the silence. marriage language Susanna Clarke
3929a5c "Otaku (ota) is also a formal way of saying "you". ta means "house", and with the honorific o, it literally means "your honorable house", implying that you are less of a person and more of a place, fixed in space and contained under a roof. Makes sense that the stereotype of the modern otaku is a shut-in, an obsessed loner and social isolate who rarely leaves his house." otaku language Ruth Ozeki
76e3508 "He had entered another imaginative world, one connected to the beginning of his life as a writer, to the Napoleonic world that had been a lifelong metaphor for the power of art, for the empire of his own creation He began to dictate notes for a new novel, "fragments of the book he imagines himself to be writing." As if he were now writing a novel of which his own altered consciousness was the dramatic center, he dictated a vision of himself as Napoleon and his own family as the Imperial Bonapartes....William and Alice he grasped with his regent hand, addressing his 'dear and most esteemed brother and sister.' To them, to whom he had granted countries, he now gave the responsibility of supervising the detailed plans he had created for 'the decoration of certain apartments, here of the Louvre and Tuileries, which you will find addressed in detail to artists and workment who take them in hand.' He was himself the 'imperial eagle.' Taking down the dictation, Theodora [his secretary] felt it to be almost more than she could bear. 'It is a heart-breaking thing to do, though, there is the extraordinary fact that his mind retain the power to frame perfectly characteristic sentences." writing death imagination sentence-structure syntax delirium hallucination novel-writing language novelists creativity Fred Kaplan
2fda897 My mother's journals are a shadow play with mine. I am a woman wedded to words. Words cast a shadow. Without a shadow there is no depth. Without a shadow there is no substance. If we have no shadow, it means we are invisible. As long as I have a shadow, I am alive. words language voice Terry Tempest Williams
fbd8c5d He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working. wonder observations english language insight Robert M. Pirsig
2bd3a97 "I don't know why--it's just that--I don't know--they're not kin."--Surprising word, I think to myself never used it before. Not of kin--sounds like hillbilly talk--not of a kind--same root--kindness, too--they can't have real kindness toward him, they're not his kin -- . That's exactly the feeling. Old word, so ancient it's almost drowned out. What a change through the centuries. Now anybody can be "kind." And everybody's supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn't help. Now it's just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class. But what do they really know about kindness who are not kin." words kindness family kin society language Robert M. Pirsig
5f9d283 My parents' marriage, to my unforgiving nineteen-year-old eye, was a car crash of cliche. Though I would have to admit, as the one making the judgement, that a 'car crash of of cliche' is itself a cliche. humor the-only-story julian-barnes language Julian Barnes
ba31f07 And first love always happens in the overwhelming first person. How can it not? Also, in the overwhelming present tense. It takes us time to realise that there are other persons, and other tenses. first-person present-tense the-only-story julian-barnes language Julian Barnes
f92f0c6 In American, when I was young, my parents always seemed to be in mourning for something. Now I understand: it must have been the language. language Jhumpa Lahiri
3c673ab Loving him was all interpretation, creative in its way. We barely used language at all to communicate: he sulked and thought I was putting him down if I made complicated remarks, and sometimes I felt numb at the compromise and self-suppression I submitted to. Yet beyond that it was all guesswork; we were thinking for two. The darkened air of the flat was full of the hints we made. The stupidity and the resentment were dreadful at times. But then in sex he lost his awkwardness. He shows his capacity to change as I rambled over him now with my fingertips and watched him glow and gulp with desire; his clothes seemed to shrivel off him and he lay there making his naked claim for the only certainty in his life. It wasn't something learnt, I suspected, from the guys before me who'd picked him up and fucked him and fucked him around. It was a kind of gift for giving, and while he did whatever I wanted it emerged as the most important thing there was for him. It was all the harder, then, when the resentment returned and I longed for him to go. sex love language resentment Alan Hollinghurst
656195c He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working. His (Korean) friends nod and smile and eat the food they've taken from tins and say no pleasantly. ideographs yes-and-no language Robert M. Pirsig
35fd059 Marain, the Culture's quintessentially wonderful language (so the Culture will tell you), has, as any schoolkid knows, one personal pronoun to cover females, males, in-betweens, neuters, children, drones, Minds, other sentient machines, and every life-form capable of scraping together anything remotely resembling a nervous system and the rudiments of language (or a good excuse for not having either). Naturally, there are ways of specifying a person's sex in Marain, but they're not used in everyday conversation language Iain M. Banks
9947bc0 "From this I think we can conclude that the definitive English holorime has yet to be written. However, an old children's riddle does seem to come close. It is the one that poses the question "How do you prove in three steps that a sheet of paper is a lazy dog?" The answer: (1) a sheet of paper is an ink-lined plane; (2) an inclined plane is a slope up; (3) a slow pup is a lazy dog." language Bill Bryson
e5de91b Arkhisan ta pegadakia. E Gkloria serbire to epidorpio. O Ntintie akoumpese to tsigaro tou sten akre tou piatou me ta amugdalota, skorpizontas stakhtes kai trimmata apo amugdalota kai epimenontas oti o Phroint eikhe dikio otan diateinotan oti e glossa einai o monadikos dromos pros to asuneideto. O Stanlei anteteine oti e glossa dotheke ston anthropo gia na krubei tis skepseis tou kai oti to mono pou mporouses na kaneis me tis lexeis etan na tis guriseis sto plai opos ta epipla ste diarkeia enos bombardismou. words freudian subconscious language thinking language-barrier Rachel Kushner
fbce6df When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive. language Jhumpa Lahiri
7033a60 Language is more fashion than science linguistics language Bill Bryson
e806612 He knows the most important language of all. Human compassion. language Ann Rinaldi
6c485a7 I suggested, further, that the following might be sculpted: a large box filled with sixty moonshine jugs--piled high, toppling over, corks popping, liquor flowing. Disorder to match the clutter and chaos of our marvelous language. Words upon words, piled high, toppling over, thoughts popping, correspondence and conversation overflowing. language Mark Dunn
689f986 Philosophy is linguistic' may mean at least six different things. (1) The study of language is a useful philosophical tool. (2) It is the only philosophical tool. (3) Language is the only subject matter of philosophy. (4) Necessary truths are established by linguistic convention. (5) Man is fundamentally a language using animal. (6) Everyday language has a status of privilege over technical and formal systems. These six propositions are independent of each other. (1) has been accepted in practice by every philosopher since Plato. Concerning the other five, philosophers have been and are divided, including philosophers within the analytic tradition. In my own opinion (1) and (5) are true, and the other four false. But I do not argue for this sweeping generalization anywhere in the present book. philosophy language Anthony Kenny
9bec75c If I am honest I will admit that I have always wanted to avoid love. Yes give me romance, give me sex, give me fights, give me all the parts of love but not the simple single word which is so complex and demands the best of me this hour this minute this forever. words love language Jeanette Winterson
93dea5d I noticed that women have a private language. A language not dependent on the constructions of men but structured by signs and expressions, and that uses ordinary words as code-words meaning something other. words women language gender Jeanette Winterson
298edfc In his field, and with his means, Rilke carries out an operation that one could philosophically describe as the 'transformation of being into message' (more commonly, 'linguistic turn'). 'Being that can be be understood is language', Heidegger would later state - which conversely implies that language abandoned by being becomes mere chatter. chatter heidegger language linguistic-turn rilke thing-poem Peter Sloterdijk
16eabf3 Lewis is like a gateway, making the riches of Deep Church more accessible. worship word-choice evangelism discipleship language Alister E. McGrath
1f64229 Mind thinks in images but, to communicate with another, must transform image into thought and then thought into language. That march, from image to thought to language, is treacherous. Casualties occur: the rich, fleecy texture of image, its extraordinary plasticity and flexibility, its private nostalgic emotional hues - all are lost when image in crammed into language. communication language Irvin D. Yalom
a449284 Humor is hard to catch in a second language. Especially when you're as serious a young man as Giovanni. He said to me the other night, 'When you are ironic, I am always behind you. I am slower. It is like you are the lightning and I am the thunder. irony language Elizabeth Gilbert
de2ba48 The sky [above Tehran] was like a star-eaten black blanket, and so far as I could read them its constellations were unfamiliar. Lawrence speaks somewhere of drawing 'strength from the depths of the universe'; Malcolm Lowry speaks about the deadness of the stars except when he looked at them with a particular girl; I had neither feeling. The founder of the Jesuits used to spend many hours under the stars; it is hard to be certain whether his first stirrings of scientific speculation or pre-scientific wonder about space and the stars in their own nature were some element in his affinity with starlight, or whether for him they were only a point of departure, but in this matter I think I am about fifty years more modern than Saint Ignatius; stars mean to me roughly what they meant to Donne's generation, a bright religious sand imposing the sense of an intrusion into human language, and arousing a certain personal thirst to be specific. jesuits malcolm-lowry point-of-departure saint-ignatius specificity tehran starlight language Peter Levi
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