WORDS QUOTES
quotations about words
Although they are
only breath, words
which I command
are immortal
SAPPHO
"Words"
Words once spoke can never be recall'd.
WENTWORTH DILLON
Art of Poetry
Words are flowing out
Like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
THE BEATLES
"Across the Univers", Let It Be
For each person there is a sentence--a series of words--which has the power to destroy him ... another sentence exists, another series of words, which will heal the person. If you're lucky you will get the second; but you can be certain of getting the first: that is the way it works. On their own, without training, individuals know how to deal out the lethal sentence, but training is required to deal out the second.
PHILIP K. DICK
Valis
It is a world of words that creates a world of things.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
Words are the bricks of our world and they have the power to change it.
ENOCK MAREGESI
"East Africa: Writing for Kiswahili Language Revolution", The Citizen, February 9, 2016
Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Words are like butter
Rolling off my lips
Cut like a knife
And now I'm sinking battleships
GERI HALLIWELL
Passion
Words are like that, they deceive, they pile up, it seems they do not know where to go, and, suddenly, because of two or three or four that suddenly come out, simple in themselves, a personal pronoun, an adverb, an adjective, we have the excitement of seeing them coming irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting the composure of our feelings, sometimes the nerves that can not bear it any longer, they put up with a great deal, they put up with everything, it was as if they were wearing armor, we might say.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Blindness
Words, in their distant past, have the past of my reveries. For a dreamer, a dreamer of words, they are all swollen with insanities. Besides, let anyone dream, and incubate a very familiar word for a little while. Then the must unexpected rare things hatch out of the word which was sleeping in its inert meaning, like a fossil of meaning.
GASTON BACHELARD
The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos
It is one of the most mysterious penalties of men that they should be forced to confide the most precious of their possessions to things so unstable and ever changing, alas, as words.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest
In an age that persecutes deviants, you can yet lose your life for being the possessor of a dangerous or unacceptable story. Words are powerful, which means that words can also be fatal.
MARGARET ATWOOD
address at the Jaipur Literature Festival, January 21, 2016
Something unfathomable lies behind every thought ... something for which there aren't any words.
PETER WEISS
The Tower
We battle on in words, as always, mere words, and what's the cure? We cannot find a thing.
HOMER
The Iliad
Words travel as swiftly as desire, so it is possible to send a message of love without them.
LAURA ESQUIVEL
Swift as Desire
Human beings can reach such desperate solitude that they may cross a boundary beyond which words cannot serve, and at such moments there is nothing left for them but to bark.
ANAÏS NIN
Collages
The views of men can only be known, or guessed at, by their words or actions.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Patrick Henry, January 15, 1799
Words themselves were the ultimate barrier to revelation.
FRANK HERBERT
Heretics of Dune
One could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there?
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.
MARKUS ZUSAK
The Book Thief