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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
1297c4d She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best. words Tad Williams
857f573 She was battered and beaten up, and not smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words. words Markus Zusak
3d56c1d Trevor realized that the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don't work that way. French? Misplace a single or and an idea vaporizes into a sonic puff. English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge. words syntax language grammar Douglas Coupland
655a5be As an unperfect actor on the stage, Who with his fear is put besides his part, Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage, Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart; So I, for fear of trust, forget to say The perfect ceremony of love's rite, And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, O'ercharg'd with burden of mine own love's might. O, let my books be then the eloquence And dumb presagers of my speaking breast; Who plead for love, and look for recompense, More than that tongue that more hath more express'd. O, learn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. words poetry love William Shakespeare
6b7b5dc Digestion of words as well; I often read aloud to myself in my writing corner in the library, where no one can hear me, for the sake of better savouring the text, so as to make it all the more mine. words library reading text read Alberto Manguel
6aa616c You string some letters together, and you make a word. You string some words together, and you make a sentence, then a paragraph, then a chapter. Words have power. words Chloe Neill
f96d317 Writing is one method of dealing with being human or wanting to suicide cause in order to write you kill yourself at the same time while remaining alive. suicide words writing language Kathy Acker
0fba56e Gods? Don't let that impress you. Anyone can be a god if they have enough worshippers. You don't even have to have powers anymore. In my time I've seen theatre gods, gladiator gods, even storyteller gods - you people see gods everywhere. Gives you an excuse for not thinking for yourselves. God is just a word. Like Fury. like demon, Just words people use for things they don't understand. Reverse it and you get dog. It's just as appropriate. words loki Joanne Harris
ee300f3 She realized that being starved for words was the same as being starved for food, because both left a hollow place inside you, a place you needed filled to make it through another day. Rachel remembered how growing up she'd thought living on a farm with just a father was as lonely as you could be. (130) words loneliness interraction speach starvation Ron Rash
a8a9d1f A tough life needs a tough language--and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers--a language powerful enough to say how it is. words literature reading poetry life language Jeanette Winterson
a21de51 One bright day in the last week of February, I was walking in the park, enjoying the threefold luxury of solitude, a book, and pleasant weather. words literature reading Anne Brontë
bf5b6a0 I know what loves are trembling into fire; how jealousy shoots its green flashes hither and thither; how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart. words literature reading Virginia Woolf
3299c6e "Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure words Seamus Heaney
c84fdd2 I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? words literature reading Franz Kafka
f5071d6 Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. words time literature history reading books Julian Barnes
e717b14 Have your dream...What you need now more than anything is discipline. Cast off mere words. Words turn into stone. (from Thailand) words dreams Haruki Murakami
06f278f [W]e talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannise over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occassions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get into trouble by making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too numerous rise against their masters, so I think I could mention a nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get into many greater, from maintaining too large a retinue of words. words Charles Dickens
339cf09 I don't like compliments and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean. words men women flattery hypocrisy Oscar Wilde
1a06e5f I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent. I love the large minority of the writers on my shelves who have struggled with words and thoughts and, by my lights, have lost the struggle. All together they are my community, the creators of the very idea of books, poetry, and extended narratives, and of the amazing human conversation that has taken place across the millennia, through weal and woe, over the heads of interest and utility. words literature reading poetry writers Marilynne Robinson
c7a7706 There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured. words literature reading Alberto Manguel
77cdc33 Words', he said, 'is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life. So you must simply try to be patient and stop squibbling. As I am telling you before, I know exactly what words I am wanting to say, but somehow or other they is always getting squiff-squiddled around. words Roald Dahl
e76f9d7 But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words. words meaning truth Elizabeth Gaskell
fee258e And what is wrong with playing with words? Words love to be played with, just like children or kittens do! words writing David Almond
1653bb3 A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,--and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day. perfection words literature reading nature knowledge Henry David Thoreau
d4983d2 We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues. words vocabulary Alberto Manguel
0b94b24 At first, all is black and white. Black on white. That's where I'm walking, through pages. These pages. Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they speak of. words pages speak Markus Zusak
c5c7332 But there were too many points at which the other self could invade the self he wanted to preserve, and there were too many forms of invasion: certain words, sounds, lights, actions his hands or feet performed, and if he did nothing at all, heard and saw nothing, the shouting of some triumphant inner voice that shocked him and cowed him. words mind life inner-voicery strangers-on-a-train patricia-highsmith lights sounds inner-voice shocked invasion train shouting self strangers voice Patricia Highsmith
8c63808 I walk alone, absorbed in my fantastic play, -- Fencing with rhymes, which, parrying nimbly, back away; Tripping on words, as on rough paving in the street, Or bumping into verses I long had dreamed to meet. words Charles Baudelaire
267127c How weightless words are when nothing will do. words Philip Levine
7da6992 Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived. words friendship Zadie Smith
c685fac And I learned that sometimes when someone says something so devastatingly perfect, there isn't a need for a response. The words said it all. words relationships lux-series perfect opal Jennifer L. Armentrout
16913f0 To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small. words reading writing Paul Auster
805d64c Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason -- if the worlds are in any way blurred -- the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'. words writing advice on-writing language Raymond Carver
ac897e9 I place my fingers upon these keys typing 2,000 dreams per minute and naked of spirit dance forth my cosmic vortex upon this crucifix called language. words literature books dreams national-poetry-month famous-quotes-from-classic-books literary-inspiration endurance nanowrimo prolific-authors writers-and-writing famous-authors the-writing-life determination language genius writers creativity jack-kerouac Aberjhani
b823c6f I have no words -- alas! -- to tell The loveliness of loving well! words poetry Edgar Allan Poe
982e615 Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters, it was storing words. In fact, what was being created was what we call a 'gevaisa', a tomb of living words. words library gevaisa Terry Pratchett
aa85f9d It was that summer, too, that I began the cutting, and was almost as devoted to it as to my newfound loveliness. I adored tending to myself, wiping a shallow red pool of my blood away with a damp washcloth to magically reveal, just above my naval: queasy. Applying alcohol with dabs of a cotton ball, wispy shreds sticking to the bloody lines of: perky. I had a dirty streak my senior year, which I later rectified. A few quick cuts and cunt becomes can't, cock turns into back, clit transforms to a very unlikely cat, the l and i turned into a teetering capital A. The last words I ever carved into myself, sixteen years after I started: vanish. Sometimes I can hear the words squabbling at each other across my body. Up on my shoulder, panty calling down to cherry on the inside of my right ankle. On the underside of a big toe, sew uttering muffled threats to baby, just under my left breast. I can quiet them down by thinking of vanish, always hushed and regal, lording over the other words from the safety of the nape of my neck. Also: At the center of my back, which was too difficult to reach, is a circle of perfect skin the size of a fist. Over the years I've made my own private jokes. You can really read me. Do you want me to spell it out for you? I've certainly given myself a life sentence. Funny, right? I can't stand to look myself without being completely covered. Someday I may visit a surgeon, see what can be done to smooth me, but now I couldn't bear the reaction. Instead I drink so I don't think too much about what I've done to my body and so I don't do any more. Yet most of the time that I'm awake, I want to cut. Not small words either. Equivocate. Inarticulate. Duplicitous. At my hospital back in Illinois they would not approve of this craving. For those who need a name, there's a gift basket of medical terms. All I know is that the cutting made me feel safe. It was proof. Thoughts and words, captured where I could see them and track them. The truth, stinging, on my skin, in a freakish shorthand. Tell me you're going to the doctor, and I'll want to cut worrisome on my arm. Say you've fallen in love and I buzz the outlines of tragic over my breast. I hadn't necessarily wanted to be cured. But I was out of places to write, slicing myself between my toes - bad, cry - like a junkie looking for one last vein. Vanish did it for me. I'd saved the neck, such a nice prime spot, for one final good cutting. Then I turned myself in. words Gillian Flynn
e1715eb Many who have learned from Hesiod the countless names of gods and monsters never understand that night and day are one words names nomenclature noumena phenomena Heraclitus
74aa30f The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. words writing life speech Don DeLillo
9d4c113 And after that, and also for each word, there should be sentences that show the twists and turns of meanings--the way almost every word slips in its silvery, fishlike way, weaving this way and that, adding subtleties of nuance to itself, and then perhaps shedding them as public mood dictates. words Simon Winchester
f5a1c62 Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate... words translation Anne Carson
8e7914c The novelist's happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings of this new order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening, that they are holding in thrall, while we turn over, feverishly, the pages of the book, our quickened breath and staring eyes. And once the novelist has brought us to that state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes to disturb us as might a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression than those which come to us in sleep; why, then, for the space of an hour he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of which, only, we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting to know, and the keenest, the most intense of which would never have been revealed to us because the slow course of their development stops our perception of them. words literature reading writing Marcel Proust
1c6ec91 Through books I discovered everything to be loved, explored, visited, communed with. I was enriched and given all the blueprints to a marvelous life, I was consoled in adversity, I was prepared for both joys and sorrows, I acquired one of the most precious sources of strength of all: an understanding of human beings, insight into their motivations. words literature reading Anaïs Nin
db60be1 His words were full of hope and threat. Like the stars. words James S.A. Corey
5719d37 However, Gregor had become much calmer. All right, people did not understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than previously, perhaps because had gotten used to them words self-expression society Franz Kafka
c00c956 To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything. But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories. And humans loved stories, because once you'd turned things into stories, you could change the stories. seasons words stories Terry Pratchett
9323d5c Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them. words literature reading Elizabeth von Arnim
f24d558 Remember to say what you mean, but don't say it meanly. lovely words spirit faith god gentle day mean quiet nice Elizabeth George
93b213f When you think about it, everything has been said before, in one way or another. It's only our experience of it that makes it new. words writing life Lauren Willig
209e94e He began to read at haphazard. He entered upon each system with a little thrill of excitement, expecting to find in each some guide by which he could rule his conduct; he felt himself like a traveller in unknown countries and as he pushed forward the enterprise fascinated him; he read emotionally, as other men read pure literature, and his heart leaped as he discovered in noble words what himself had obscurely felt. words literature reading W. Somerset Maugham
7f8a977 We read in slow, long motions, as if drifting in space, weightless. We read full of prejudice, malignantly. We read generously, making excuses for the text, filling gaps, mending faults. And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder... as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place deep within us--the recognition of something we never knew was there... words literature reading Manguel Alberto
04ff751 But without a reader, a story is only half complete. It's like blueprints that never get built; like a swimming pool without water. The foundation's there, but it's useless. Without a reader, the words just sit on the page, waiting to come alive in someone's imagination. words reader Jodi Picoult
4c011c9 "What do you think was the first sound to become a word, a meaning?... motherhood words mother-and-daughter mother Amy Tan
33deebe "I don't know what message to send to Bran. Help him Tyrion." "What help could I give him? I am no maester, to ease his pain. I have no spell to give him back his legs." "You gave me help when I needed it" Jon Snow said. words bran tyrion jon-snow George R. R. Martin
edaf28e Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use. The mere presence in the dictionary of a word like 'living' does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world. words suffering reality living science tools Richard Dawkins
ee2f1d5 We are liable to miss the best of life if we do not know how to tingle, if we do not learn to hoist ourselves just a little higher than we generally are in order to sample the rarest and ripest fruit of art which human thought has to offer. words literature reading books meaning growth Vladimir Nabokov
e0a190d The pages and the words are my world, spread out before your eyes and for your hand to touch. Vaguely, I can see you face looking down into me, as I look back. Do you see my eyes? words pages touch Markus Zusak
f8b3f51 It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. The true things are too big or too small, or in any case is always the wrong size to fit in the template called language. words Jeanette Winterson
a8a4f50 It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach the other side - just like I want the words. I want my words to build bridges strong enough to walk on. I want them to tower over the world so I can stand up on them and walk to the other side. words world other-side Markus Zusak
a2d6c4b n lklmt mthl l`Sfyr , tmDy Tlyq@ dwn nZm wl w`y wbmkn 'y kn bqlyl mn lsHr 'n yHbsh lytjr bh words stories Isabel Allende
69ddb81 "I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly and language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language... I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again. I would conjure up other verbs, other images, other silent cries. It still was not right. But what exactly was "it"? "It" was something elusive, darkly shrouded for fear of being usurped, profaned. All the dictionary had to offer seemed meager, pale, lifeless." words trauma Elie Wiesel
c845141 She liked getting hold of some book... and keeping it to herself, and gnawing its contents in privacy, and pondering the meaning without sharing her thoughts with any one, or having to decide whether the book was a good one or a bad one. words literature reading Virginia Woolf
a90a88b Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. words literature reading Julian Barnes
c407cb8 I don't remember what they said, only the fury of their words, how the air turned raw and full of welts. Later it would remind me of birds trapped inside a closed room, flinging themselves against the windows and the walls, against each other. words Sue Monk Kidd
3f07265 The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it. words interpretation Flannery O'Connor
a8d2c51 To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions--there we have none. words literature reading freedom Virginia Woolf
2b7f2f5 She would go off in the morning with the punt full of books, and spend long glorious days away in the forest lying on the green springy carpet of whortleberries, reading. She would most diligently work at furnishing her empty mind. She would sternly endeavour to train it not to jump. words literature mind reading Elizabeth von Arnim
89af0cb In books, that which is most generally interesting is what comes home to the most cherished private experience of the greatest number. It is not the book of him who has travelled the farthest over the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home. words literature reading Henry David Thoreau
13abb5f Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us. words writing where-i-m-most-likely-to-find-it Haruki Murakami
ac81ce0 Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth. words pain Emma Donoghue
d08c4e4 For a moment, I debated whether I should tell someone about the words I'd started writing down, but I couldn't. In a way, I felt ashamed, even though my writing was the one thing that whispered okayness in my ear. I didn't speak it, to anyone. words writing okayness Markus Zusak
075c74c Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me. words mind thoughts truth Markus Zusak
120105b ... a man needs no camel to ride to hell, yea, nor horse, nor mule; a man may ride into hell on his tongue... words Terry Pratchett
b798f19 I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I am a liar. words lies reality truth inspirational Roger Zelazny
213f1de Silence made space for other people's words, which was important for those who needed to be listened to. words silence love listened rachel-simon the-story-of-beautiful-girl word listening Rachel Simon
4874522 V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned into something that illuminates the moment and may, if we're lucky -- that word again -- have even further ranging consequences and meaning. The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things -- like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right they can hit all the notes. words writing design on-writing Raymond Carver
5f6672a On no days of our childhood did we live so fully perhaps as those we thought we had left behind without living them, those that we spent with a favourite book. words literature reading Marcel Proust
ca1c600 There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle. words Samuel Beckett
d1fd502 The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have not discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words. words power-of-words writing-process Ayn Rand
52e328f That speaking the words, even if true, had little power to change the inevitable or even make him feel much better. words true change speaking feel power Nicholas Sparks
95a4f6e [He] was always here to offer cups of good clear Walden Pond, or shout down the deep well of Shakespeare and listen, with satisfaction, for echoes. Here the lion and the hartebeest lay together, here the jackass became a unicorn. words Ray Bradbury
53a86fa Some words are wind, ser. Some are treason. words wind George R.R. Martin
fef39ca And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder, as if someone or something had 'walked over our grave,' as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place deep within us - the recognition of something we never knew was there, or of something we vaguely felt as a flicker or a shadow, whose ghostly form rises and passes back into us before we can see what it is, leaving us older and wiser. words literature reading recognition Alberto Manguel
ea04dbf What is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge? words talking Kahlil Gibran
e4a66c4 He found himself in a room not unlike the shop. All books again, packed tight on shelves or laying in piles on every surface. It was a cozy room, for all that ; it smelled of warm, rich words and very deep thoughts. words thoughts jenny-nimmo room-filled-with-books smell-of-books room Jenny Nimmo
1f3e358 The words sounded like a mournful incantation. words magic melancholy language Dan Simmons
b841d30 To be read. To be heard. To be seen. I want to be read, I want to be heard. I don't need to be seen. To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones. Words have a weight to them. How you choose to present them and to whom is a matter of style and choice. words writer writing curiousity disvoery style ego Terry Tempest Williams
38025b8 How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. words literature reading Henry David Thoreau
5224366 He believes that if talent is demanded of a literary publisher or a writer, it must also be demanded of a reader. Because we mustn't deceive ourselves: on the journey of reading we often travel through difficult terrains that demand a capacity for intelligent emotion, a desire to understand the other, and to approach a language distinct from the one of our daily tyrannies... Writers fail readers, but it also happens the other way around and readers fail writers when all they ask of them is confirmation that the world is how they see it. words literature reading intelligence talent Enrique Vila-Matas
9fb0c53 I worked it through with pride,I almost spoke without words, and i'm masterly at speaking without words.All my life I have spoken without words, and I have passed through whole tragedies on my own account without words words silence life tragedies speaking master silent talking Fyodor Dostoyevsky
a0f407e The sign stopped me-- or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves, that they cease to be ambiguous. words Daniel Quinn
60dcb4c And there was never a better time to delve for pleasure in language than the sixteenth century, when novelty blew through English like a spring breeze. Some twelve thousand words, a phenomenal number, entered the language between 1500 and 1650, about half of them still in use today, and old words were employed in ways not tried before. Nouns became verbs and adverbs; adverbs became adjectives. Expressions that could not have grammatically existed before - such as 'breathing one's last' and 'backing a horse', both coined by Shakespeare - were suddenly popping up everywhere. words Bill Bryson
b5a6a86 "ahthOOn SSyng!" I said. "That's farewell." "It sounds evil." "It is," I answered, and we parted." words love goodbye language Gail Carson Levine
16c5df3 ...at the end of the day there was nothing to be gained by reminding people that everything that had ever been written, even the greatest and most authoritative texts in the world, were about dreams, not real life, dreams conjured up by words. words ideas Orhan Pamuk
24eb21e Have you ever looked at, say, a picture or a great building or read a paragraph in a book and felt the world suddenly expand and, in the same instant, contract and harden into a kernel of perfect purity? Do you know what I mean? Everything suddenly fits, everything's in its place. words literature reading connection Carol Shields
3e7323b Of course, not everything is unsayable in words, only the living truth. words truth Eugène Ionesco
1d26696 Don't be ridiculous, please.' The most insulting words in the world! words ridiculous L.M. Montgomery
56f313c I like the sound of words, but I don't ever really expect my slow, slanted impression of the world to change by what I read. understanding words reading wicked Gregory Maguire
96f2176 To say exactly what one means, even to one's own private satisfaction, is difficult. To say exactly what one means and to involve another person is harder still. Communication between you and me relies on assumptions, associations, commonalities and a kind of agreed shorthand, which no-one could precisely define but which everyone would admit exists. That is one reason why it is an effort to have a proper conversation in a foreign language. Even if I am quite fluent, even if I understand the dictionary definitions of words and phrases, I cannot rely on a shorthand with the other party, whose habit of mind is subtly different from my own. Nevertheless, all of us know of times when we have not been able to communicate in words a deep emotion and yet we know we have been understood. This can happen in the most foreign of foreign parts and it can happen in our own homes. It would seem that for most of us, most of the time, communication depends on more than words. words Jeanette Winterson
0533b96 With a certain frustration I knew I spoke too soon, too urgently. I wanted to get out of the way the things I knew to say, wanted to say, the things I'd been thinking, all in the hope of moving into the unforeseen. words thoughts hope unforeseen Denis Johnson
b4a5070 It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. words literature reading Henry David Thoreau
d476196 The words were good words, Ulysses felt, maybe even great words, but the list was very incomplete. He was just getting started. The words needed to be arranged, fussed with, put in the order of his heart. words poetry writing Kate DiCamillo
8161539 Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart. words literature writing fonts typeface typography power letters H.G. Wells
27f5af6 The spoken word has come to dominate many Protestant forms of worship: the words of prayers, responsive readings, Scripture, the sermon, and so forth. Yet the spoken word is perhaps the least effective way of reaching the heart; one must constantly pay attention with one's mind. The spoken word tends to go to our heads, not our hearts. words faith god language experience Marcus J. Borg
303da24 Tyler's words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person. words nice Chuck Palahniuk
681cae7 I find me, leave me, go towards me, come from me, nothing ever but me, a particle of me, retrieved, lost, gone astray, I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts... words anxiety turmoil Samuel Beckett
fc995e5 Words are wind, but wind can fan a fire. My father and my uncle fought words with steel and flame. We shall fight words with words, and put out the fires before they start. words words-of-wisdom steel words-are-dangerous words-are-powerful words-as-weapons fire-and-blood wind flame George R.R. Martin
fbf8ec1 It was a world of acts, and words had no more influence on acts than the sound of a waterfall has on the flow of the stream. words Kim Stanley Robinson
5971361 It would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns ... It goes, it goes ... and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I. words thoughts sartre Jean-Paul Sartre
e2cf7c2 I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. words reading writing Robert Louis Stevenson
724695d Words are what you fight with but what you fight about is whether or not you're afraid of them. words arguments fighting David Mitchell
4e9935f Re-reading a collection of my stuff, I was rather startled to find that it was 'perhaps. words writing uncertainty Christopher Hitchens
6344e30 I can hear the library humming in the night, a choir of authors murmuring inside their books along the unlit, alphabetical shelves, Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son, each one stitched into his own private coat, together forming a low, gigantic chord of language. words library literature reading poetry Billy Collins
658a11f That night two lovers whispering under the lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the Saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the words tumbled him over in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves. words passion love Jeanette Winterson
cb01293 In literature, too, we admire prose in which a small and astutely arranged set of words has been constructed to carry a large consignment of ideas. 'We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others,' writes La Rochefoucauld in an aphorism which transports us with an energy and exactitude comparable to that of Maillard bridge. The Swiss engineer reduces the number of supports just as the French writer compacts into a single line what lesser minds might have taken pages to express. We delight in complexity to which genius has lent an appearance of simplicity. (p 207) words literature writing engineering simplicity Alain de Botton
657266b "She said the words, and then she had a strange moment of seeing them, hanging there over her head. "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!" thought Flora. " -- words vacuums squirrels speaking sentences Kate DiCamillo
022472d Somewhere embedded in every ordinary book are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written. words G.K. Chesterton
a977fee There is a weird power in a spoken word. words power Joseph Conrad
291b907 It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. words literature reading perception Henry David Thoreau
462e53c It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. words literature reading Henry David Thoreau
62dc212 She was still clutching the book. She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life. words reading death Markus Zusak
fc5d26e What are the thorns really telling her? It's why she won't let us see them, why she clings to them--or they cling to her--as though she got herself buried in a bramble thicket and she can't get out and we can't get in to free her. words tangled thorns Patricia A. McKillip
dc230ee These are Tyler's words coming out of my mouth. I am Tyler's mouth. I am Tyler's hands. words mouth Chuck Palahniuk
420640c Real people are made out of a whole lot of things--flesh, bone, blood, nerves, stuff like that. Literary people are made out of words. words literature reality fictional-characters Thomas C. Foster
4a2a5fd Words are instruments, they are tools that, in their different ways, are as effective as any sharp edge or violate chemical. They are, like coins, items of great value, but they represent a currency that, well spent, returns ever greater riches. words literature inspirational power-of-words Tim Radford
8e5f577 There is indeed power in words. Most of the lasting change that has been forged in the history of this world came not from a wielding of the swift and bloody sword of battle but from the shaping scalpel of ideas, and what are ideas without the words to deliver them? words power-of-words Mark Dunn
c2db8ce What a strange thing to consider imagining a world into being with nothing but words, intention, and desire. words writing imagination Blake Crouch
11a6bdf When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie. words truth stories Diane Setterfield
35ecc5f Fictions exist because of this fact. Because we have only one life, and our desires and fantasies demand a thousand lives. Because the abyss between what we are and what we would like to be has to be bridged somehow. That was why fictions were born: so that, through living this vicarious, transient, precarious, but also passionate and fascinating life that fiction transports us to, we can incorporate the impossible into the possible and our existence can be both reality and unreality, history and fable, concrete life and marvellous adventure. words literature reading fiction Mario Vargas Llosa
f7b101a And the people who would burn the words, the people who would take the books from the shelves, the firemen and the ignorant, the ones afraid of tales and words and dreams and Hallowe'en and people who have tattooed themselves with stories and Boys! You Can Grow Mushrooms in Your Cellar! and as long as your words which are people which are days which are my life, as long as your words survive, then you lived and you mattered and you changed the world and I cannot remember your name. I learned your books. Burned them into my mind. In case the firemen come to town. words the-man-who-forgot-ray-bradbury Neil Gaiman
d84fb50 The savage rushing of the river seemed to be inside her head, inside her body. Even when the oarswomen, their guides, were speaking to her, she had the impression she couldn't quite hear them because of the roar. Not of the river that did indeed roar, just behind them, close to the simple shelter they'd made for her, but because of an internal roar as of the sound of a massive accumulation of words, spoken all at once, but collected over a lifetime, now trying to leave her body. As they rose to her lips, and in response to the question: Do you want to go home? she leaned over a patch of yellow grass near her elbow and threw up. All the words from decades of her life filled her throat. Words she had said or had imagined saying or had swallowed before saying to her father, dead these many years. All the words to her mother. To her husbands. Children. Lovers. The words shouted back at the television set, spreading its virus of mental confusion. Once begun, the retching went on and on. She would stop, gasping for breath, rest a minute, and be off again. Draining her body of precious fluid... Soon, exhausted, she was done. No, she had said weakly, I don't want to go home. I'll be all right now. words river Alice Walker
9d35d4a When it comes to words, rather than using our own voice, authentic and unpracticed, we steal someone else's to shield our fear. words fear quote voice Terry Tempest Williams
db0e92f And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through me. I could feel it on its hands and knees inside me, rising up, rising up - and I smiled. I smiled, thinking, The hunger, because I knew it all too well. The hunger. The desire. Then, slowly, as we walked on, I felt the beauty of it, and I could taste it, like words inside my mouth. words feel mouth taste hunger Markus Zusak
5400eb8 They're brainless girls, otherwise they wouldn't be seen dead here. They're pretty, with ugly, appealing smiles and conversations we can't hear. They breathe smoke and blow it out, and words drop from their mouths and get crushed to the floor. Or they get discarded, just to glow with warmth for a moment, for someone else to tread on later. words discarded mouths smoke smiles girls pretty conversations ugly Markus Zusak
3d8a70d Our own place is mall perhaps, but when your old man is eaten by his own shadow, you realise that maybe in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it. Maybe that's what these pages of words are about: Bringing the world to the window. words old-man small window place shadow Markus Zusak
13d18fb speech to him was a task, a battle, words mustered behind his beard and issued one at a time, heavy and square like tanks. words Margaret Atwood
b8c7e0b But she went to tell the bees. She felt like an idiot doing it, but she'd promised. She remembered that it wasn't enough just to think at them: you had to say the words out loud. Bees were the messengers between this world and the other worlds, Pilar had said. Between the living and the dead. They carried the Word made air. words Margaret Atwood
67fea49 Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean. words relationships women William Faulkner
e672d29 Can we only speak when we are fully living what we are saying? If all our words had to cover all our actions, we would be doomed to permanent silence! Sometimes we are called to proclaim God's love even when we are not yet fully able to live it. Does that mean we are hypocrites? Only when our own words no longer call us to conversion. Nobody completely lives up to his or her own ideals and visions. But by proclaiming our ideals and visions with great conviction and great humility, we may gradually grow into the truth we speak. As long as we know that our lives always will speak louder than our words, we can trust that our words will remain humble. words truth ideals lives Henri J.M. Nouwen
40cb9b5 The word is always a word for others. Words need to be heard. When we give words to what we are living, these words need to be received and responded to. A speaker needs a listener. A writer needs a reader. When the flesh - the lived human experience - becomes word, community can develop. When we say, 'Let me tell you what we saw. Come and listen to what we did. Sit down and let me explain to you what happened to us. Wait until you hear whom we met,' we call people together and make our lives into lives for others. The word brings us together and calls us into community. When the flesh becomes word, our bodies become part of a body of people. words language Henri J.M. Nouwen
ad0bf54 Except that love - that mysterious, vast, all-encompassing power - could not possibly be contained in a single word. words Mary Balogh
fa61d33 I liked old time music but what i meant by that was the period from the 1930s through the 60s, nothing before and little after. Performers like fats waller, Sinatra, billie holiday, louis armstrong, rosemary clooney, ella, sammy Davis Jr, dean martin... If the lyrics weren't stupid. Words were important. words music Jeffery Deaver
eea2f68 A librarian had found the baby sitting abandoned on the sheer edge of the world; the librarians kept her. That proved shrewd. Nepenthe had drooled on words, talked at them, and tried to eat them until she learned to take them into her eyes instead of her mouth. words Patricia A. McKillip
9623922 The innumerable worlds in the Milky Way, words. words worlds Jack Kerouac
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