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Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre Quotes

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Famous Marilyn Chandler McEntyre Quotes

“In reading a recent novel, I myself was convicted by a comment the mother makes to her adult daughter: ‘My dear, you’ve missed so many opportunities to say nothing.’ We do miss these opportunities, as well as opportunities to say less and say it more judiciously. And so we miss particular delights of finding words and speaking them into silences big enough to allow them to be heard.”

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Book:Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies
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“But the high play of witty conversation can degenerate into exhibitionistic banter if it is not tempered by an opposite and perhaps even more important virtue, which is the capacity to hold one's peace, to wait to pause for thought, to consent to shared silence. Words need space. Witty, weighty, well-chosen words need more space than others to be received rightly, reckoned with, and responded to. That space, the silence between words, is as important a part of good conversation as rests are a part of a pleasing, coherent musical line.”

LanguageCommunitySilenceListeningConversationMarilyn Chandler Mcentyre
Book:Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies
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“Like metaphor, paradox as a habit of mind preserves us from simplistic linearity and literalism and keeps us attentive to the complex ways in which, so often, the opposite is also true. This habit of mind is deeply biblical; indeed, to listen for the uses of paradox in Jesus’ recorded teachings is to recognize how it always points us to a higher plane of understanding. To grasp paradox is a prerequisite not only for fathoming spiritual truths (and every spiritual tradition resorts to paradox to get at what is true as if there is no more direct route to truth), but also for thinking complexly and compassionately about this-worldly issues that affect us daily: how the rich may be poor; how power is a form of vulnerability; how saying no may be a way of saying yes.”

WritingPoetryLanguageEmpathyParadoxMarilyn Chandler Mcentyre
Book:Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies
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“...there is no question that precision is difficult to achieve. Imprecision is easier. Imprecision is available in a wide variety of attractice and user-friendly forms: cliches, abstractions and generalizations, jargon, passive constructions, hyperbole, sentimentality, and reassuring absolutes. Imprecision minimizes discomfort and creates a big, soft, hospitable place for all opinions; even the completely vacuous can find a welcome there. So the practice of precision not only requires attentiveness and effort; it may also require the courage to afflict the comfortable and, consequently, tolerate their resentment.”

WritingTruthLanguageAttentivenessMarilyn Chandler Mcentyre
Book:Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies
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“Every sentence has its drumbeat. rhythm is one of the most powerful dimensions of language: it separates tribes, united families, soothes children, and shocks us into new awarenesses. Every good writer, marching to his or her own drumbeat, marks out a vibrational field as home territory. The cadences of our sentences carry echos of ancestry and influence as surely as the double helix that orchstrates the life of the body.”

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Author:Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
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