Language Quotes

Language is a virus from outer space.

I think foreign countries really do like it when American artists sing in their language. And when you go over there and say, 'Hi, how are you?' in their language, they love it. It makes them feel like you're doing it just for them. We in America take so much for granted.

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

I think maybe since there isn't a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don't understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out.

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.

If you take 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example of somebody who creates a new language in film by what he was able to accomplish with art direction, photography, lighting, etc., it is still a gold standard for science fiction.

Music is not supposed to be nationalist. It is supposed to surpass language barriers. It is about generations communicating with each other.

Its language is as bare as a monk's cell, and as uninviting.

Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

I'm not any good at foul language or anything like that.

For us chess players the language of artist is something natural.

There's a lot of money with a lot of big law firms that have a tremendous amount at stake by getting the right language to convince the right jury that my client is either innocent or that the opposition is guilty.

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

Every language has its own music.

Sports is like rock 'n' roll. Both are dominant cultural forces, both speak an international language, and both are all about emotions.

In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.

Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.

I was worried people would laugh at me when I started to talk the language, but they were just pleasantly surprised that I could. The sense of humour here is great - once I could have a giggle, I settled down.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

You have to learn the language of Hamlet.

I lived in England to learn English. When I went to England for the first time, it was like being on the Moon. I had no friends, I couldn't speak the language. I was very isolated.

Because it equates tradition with prejudice, the left finds itself increasingly unable to converse with ordinary people in their common language.

There are times when the power of language is not the power that is needed.

Records have never really been my strong suit. I've always been a much better live act. I didn't understand the language of the studio. You sing differently in a studio. The language, the craft - it's just a whole different deal. I avoided the problem on my first record by doing a live album.

The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.