Quotes by Writers - Page 93

I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can't live without a culture anymore.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Perfect sanity is a myth propagated by straitjacket salesmen.
Rebecca McKinsey
If you’re lying to everyone you know, including yourself, at every possible turn, is a little upheaval really the worst that could happen to your life right now?
Agnostic Zetetic
Her Brooklyn accent only comes out when she's angry. This is the best part....I pick at my pancakes while she tells me, simply, "It's ok to change your mind." About a feeling, a person, a promise of love. I can't stay just to avoid contradicting myself. I don't have to watch him cry.
Lena Dunham
You have to learn to recognize your own depths.
Joseph Campbell
We take most everything at face value. Otherwise how could we get by?" ~ "The Museum of the Dearly Departed
Rebecca Makkai
And here I am. God and I, ever One, and Alone.
Fakeer Ishavardas
I can't help seeing a cage for what it is. Sure, it protects the bulb, but maybe if people weren't so careless, then nothing would need to be caged.
A.S. King
Once again I am only who I am.
George Saunders
It [speaking with words that bring about harmony] consists of speaking of what is good about people, instead of what is wrong with them. For some people this is an almost impossible exercise, for they have become totally habituated to speaking critically. We all seem to have a special talent for finding critical things to say about the world, about others, and about ourselves! (117)
Jean-Yves Leloup
[H]is mouth pursed, but pursed in American, more generous than English pursing, ready for broader vowels and less mincing sounds. His body was long and lean and trim; he had American hips, ready for a neat belt and the faraway ghost of a gunbelt.
A.S. Byatt
Once you've recognized your own limits, you've raised yourself to a higher level of being, since you're closer to the real you...
Banana Yoshimoto
How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick.
Joseph Campbell
I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Always" is a good word to believe in.
Susan Abulhawa
I was terribly, painfully present in the world, and so far removed from it.
Lia Habel
That night it did not rain as much in the sky as it did in his heart.
Faraaz Kazi
Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus
Rohinton Mistry
I know she is crying. Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her.
Susan Abulhawa
She walked away too far for me to call... and for her to hear my voice.
Faraaz Kazi
Sometimes your eyes are not the only place the tears fall from.
Faraaz Kazi
If we just had some time to ourselves, we could talk to each other the way we used to. Maybe about nothing in particular at first, but even that would be a start.
A. Manette Ansay
Love lies in those unsent drafts in your mailbox. Sometimes you wonder whether things would have been different if you'd clicked 'Send'.
Faraaz Kazi
We were a bit like bacon and eggs, where y'know, the chicken is involved, but the pig is really committed? I totally gave myself to it just as we promised, "for better or worse", and you didn't see it like that.
Dawn French
maybe if people weren't so careless, then nothing would need to be caged.
A.S. King
Two people occupying the same air. Nothing else in common. Just oxygen.
Dawn French
Death is beautiful, part of life... No, it is sad. It’s sad when anyone dies. Even though every single human dies. So it’s really not that sad.
Harris Wittels
I never said I was sad, I’m just pessimistic,” said Alecto. “Expect the worst, that way you’ll never be disappointed, Mandy Valems.
Rebecca McNutt
Lucas heard a strange sound, something he hadn’t heard in months. At first it didn’t seem real, it was something distant from the past. It was the first time in nearly a year he had heard himself laugh, and it momentarily stunned him
Mark A. Cooper
Robot. Is. Sad. Because silly bitch. Will. Not. Dance.
Libba Bray
Why are you drinking? demanded the little prince."So that I may forget," replied the tippler."Forget what?" inquired the little prince, who was already sorry for him."Forget that I am ashamed," the tippler confessed, hanging his head."Ashamed of what?" insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him."Ashamed of drinking!
Antoine De Saint Exupery
It was going to be a long, dark night but not quite as dark as it was in the abyss of his heart where there was nothing but hollowness, yet it felt heavy, almost as if someone still resided there.
Faraaz Kazi
Who would have listened to his tales of woe when his love was the flickering lamp over his own decaying tomb?
Faraaz Kazi
I wanted to wash away our past misgivings in those tears that would run from our eyes and weave a new start by folding her in my arms.I wanted to, but I did not!
Faraaz Kazi
Isolation, for him, had become a basic sine qua non for existence and loneliness, his sole companion like a perfectly faithful twin. He was someone for whom even happiness would cry for, mourning the death of his sentiments and murdering the existence of his soul.
Faraaz Kazi
He had never smoked but then had he ever loved? Life made him love and love made him smoke.
Faraaz Kazi
When your mind is rich in the wisdom, and your heart is sensitive and filled with love, you are a person, who can change the world.
Ehsan Sehgal
Du hast so viele Leben, wie du Sprachen sprichst. (You have as many lives as the number of languages you speak.)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.
Samuel Johnson
Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
Samuel Johnson
Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks they can talk about language.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A smile or a tear has not nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man
Frederick Douglass
One day, walking neer one of your Yuman houses, smelling all the interest with snout, I herd, from inside, the most amazing sound. Turns out, what that sound is, was: the Yuman voice, making werds. They sounded grate! They sounded like prety music! I listened to those music werds until the sun went down...
George Saunders
Mind in language are inseparable. If we violate our language we violate ourselves.
William Zinsser
(on the word "fuck")'Oh, come on, Mum,' I sighed at her protest. 'It's just an old Anglo-Saxon word for the female organ which has been adopted by an inherently misogynist language as a negative epithet. It's the same as "fuck", it basically means the same as copulate, but the latter is perfectly acceptable. Why? Because copulate has its roots in Latin and Latin reminds us that we are a sophisticated, learned species, not the rutting animals that these prehistoric grunts would have us appear to be, and isn't that really the issue here? We don't want to admit that we are essentially animals? We want to distinguish ourselves from the fauna with grand conceits and elaborate language; become angels worthy of salvation, not dumb creatures consigned to an earthly, terminal end. It's just a word, Mum; a sound meaning a thing; and your disgust is just denial of a greater horror: that our consciousness is not an indication of our specialness but the terrifying key to knowing how truly insignificant we are.'She told me to got fuck myself.
Simon Pegg
Wow, I miss Latin. So much fun - all those exciting verbs that don't come unit the end of the sentence. It's like a movie trailer for language.
Libba Bray
To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices.
Rex Stout
Thank you,’ I answered, unsure of the proper American response to her gracious enthusiasm. In the Arab world, gratitude is a language unto itself. “May Allah bless the hands that give me this gift”; “Beauty is in the eyes that find me pretty”; “May Allah never deny your prayer”; and so on, an infinite string of prayerful appreciation. Coming from such a culture, I have always found a mere “thank you” an insufficient expression that makes my voice sound miserly and ungrateful.” (169).
Susan Abulhawa
Our effectiveness depends on our capacity to be audacious and astute, clear and appealing. I would hope that we can create a language more fearless and beautiful than that used by conformist writers to greet the twilight.
Eduardo Galeano
Super 8 film is the language of silence.
Rebecca McNutt
...it always felt good to have that moment of resolve, like saying, "I'm gonna learn French!" It doesn't matter if you do it or not, deciding is the high, right?
Felicia Day
Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.
Aldous Huxley
The Russian commands sound like the name of the camp commandant. Shishtvanyanov: a gnashing and spluttering collection of ch, sh, tch, shch. We can't understand the actual words, but we sense the contempt. You get used to contempt. After a while the commands just sound like a constant clearing of the throat—coughing, sneezing, nose blowing, hacking up mucus. Trudi Pelikan said: Russian is a language that's caught a cold.
Herta Müller
Your first love is like your first language. No matter how many other languages you learn to speak, you can never be as good as in your first.
Ahmed Alibage
Your first love is like your first language. No matter how many other languages you speak, you can never be as good as in your first.
Ahmed Alibage
Holding the lamb in his arms, Jesus watched the people file past, some coming, some going, some carrying animals to be sacrificed, some returning without them, looking joyful and exclaiming, Alleluia, Hosanna, Amen, or saying none of these things, feeling it was inappropriate to walk around shouting Hallelujah or Hip hip hurrah, because there is really not much difference between the two expressions, we use them enthusiastically until with the passage of time and by dint of repetition we finally ask ourselves, What does it mean, only to find there is no answer.
José Saramago
He liked to address every man in his own language, as a good European should.
H.G.Wells
Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write” Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write
George Sand
I know that language will be a crucial instrument, that I can overcome the stigma of my marginality, the weight of presumption against me, only if the reassuringly right sounds come out of my mouth.
Eva Hoffman
Language is a metaphor for experience. It’s as arbitrary as the mass of chaotic images we call memory–but we can put it into lines to narrativize over fear.
Lidia Yuknavitch