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“But why can't the language for creativity be the language of regeneration? You killed that poem, we say. You're a killer. You came into that novel guns blazing. I am hammering this paragraph, I am banging them out, we say. I owned that workshop. I shut it down. I crushed them. We smashed the competition. I'm wrestling with the muse. The state, where people live, is a battleground state. The audience a target audience. "Good for you, man" a man once said to me at a party, "you're making a killing with poetry. You're knockin' em dead.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Know what you are talking about.”
― Pope John Paul II

“He said "cool" like I say a Spanish word when I'm not sure of the pronunciation.”
― Kelley Armstrong, The Summoning

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“The fact that I
am writing to you
in English
already falsifies what I
wanted to tell you.
My subject:
how to explain to you that I
don't belong to English
though I belong nowhere else”
― Gustavo Perez Firmat, Bilingual Blues: Poems, 1981-1994

“The misuse of language induces evil in the soul”
― Socrates

“Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Words have power.”
― Mira Grant, Blackout

“We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence and start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“You have to watch your language. People will think you have no fucking class”
― Lani Diane Rich

“If we learn to listen to the others and try to capture the soul of their language, and can scent the fragrance of the words we hear, we can be transported to a nirvana of deep understanding, without being overwhelmed by the reality of the clock. ("Watching the flight of time")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“If this hast been done to language, I fear to know the fate of all else.”
― Michael J. Sullivan, Theft of Swords

“The words emerge from her body without her realizing it, as if she were being visited by the memory of a language long forsaken.”
― Marguerite Duras, Summer Rain

“Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives”
― Alfred De Musset

“When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language.”
― D.H. Lawrence

“Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.”
― Karl Popper

“What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!”
― Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt

“Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can't deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can't be explained and understood.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“All translations are made up" opined Vikram, "Languages are different for a reason. You can't move ideas between them without losing something”
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

“Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideologyâ€� we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.”
― Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes

“I like to see an angry Englishman," said Poirot. "They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language.”
― Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express

“All words, in every language, are metaphors.”
― Marshall McLuhan

“Words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own aristocratic titles, their own plebeian stigmas.”
― José Saramago, Death with Interruptions

“A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.”
― Lev S. Vygotsky, Thought and Language

“To have another language is to possess a second soul.”
― Charlemagne

“I can do everything with my language but not with my body. What I hide by my language, my body utters. I can deliberately mold my message, not my voice. By my voice, whatever it says, the other will recognize "that something is wrong with me". I am a liar (by preterition), not an actor. My body is a stubborn child, my language is a very civilized adult...”
― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

“German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“S'mimasen," Alyss said repeatedly as they brushed against passerby.
"What does that mean?" Will asked as they reached a stretch of street bare of any other pedestrians. He was impressed by Alyss's grasp of the local language.
"It means 'pardon me,'" Alyss replied, but then a shadow of doubt crossed her face. "At least, I hope it does. Maybe I'm saying 'you have the manners of a fat, rancid sow.”
― John Flanagan, The Emperor of Nihon-Ja

“A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies
that have moulded them”
― Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India

“It [discovering Finnish] was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien