Best language & character Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“When I started formulating the first Frank comic, I knew I wanted it to be something that was beyond time and specific place. I felt that having the characters speak would tie it to 20th-century America, because that would be the idiom of the language they would use, the language I use.”

Firsts Character Use Would Be Wanted America Speak Language Felt Century Comic Ties Frank 20th Century Idiom

Author:Jim Woodring

“I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page.”

Knows Character Seems Language Sound Pages Plot Rude Juvenile Adverbs

Author:Colum McCann

“Playing characters that speak a very violent language was my livelihood.”

Character Speak Language Violent Livelihood

Author:Greg Bryk

“I was always amazed the way people would come in looking one way and transform completely to the point where I couldn't recognize their language, their accent, the way they looked, their hair, their face even changed becoming so inside of the character.”

People Way Character Faces Language Changed Hair Becoming One Way Accents Amazed

Author:Alicia Keys

“Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language, when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together on the spot-that's what I love most. That's where character lives.”

People Persons Character Together Literature Language Loses Decision Experiments Spots Life Decision

Author:Anna Deavere Smith

“The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.”

Men Character Language He Man Expression Refined Coarse

Book:Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

“The classical scholars have kept alive the tradition of the superiority of the ancient languages -- a kaleidoscopic mass of suffixes and prefixes, supposed to represent an infinite shading of meaning. It is a character they share with the Ojibway and the Zulu.”

Character Language Alive Share Mass Tradition Infinite Ancient Scholar Superiority

Book:Leacock on Life

Source: Leacock on Life

“'God' is the name given to the most 'important' human idea. In English, as in other languages, the original sense of the word is obscure. But the character of the name is the same in all languages: it is a question. 'God' is the question 'Is there something more important than, something besides, man?'”

Men Humans Important Ideas Character Names Language Given Originals Obscure

Author:Laura Riding

“Literature is the voice of the age and the state; the character, energy, and resources of the country are reflected and imaged forth in the conceptions of its great minds; they are organs of the time; they speak not their own language, they scarce think their own thoughts; but under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and utter the sentiments which society inspires.”

Source: Selections from the Works of Edward Everett: With a Sketch of His Life

“I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people speak more articulately than some critics think, but before the 20th century it really didn't occur to many writers that their language had to be the language of everyday speech. When Wordsworth first considered that in poetry, it was considered very much of a shocker. And although I'm delighted to have things in ordinary speech, it's not what I'm trying to perform myself at all: I want my characters to get their ideas across, and I want them to be articulate.”

People Thinking Want Writing Trying Firsts Mean Ideas Character Care Speak Language Century Speech Ordinary Critics Everyday 20th Century Delighted Wordsworth

Author:Louis Auchincloss

“The absurdist is concerned with the search for meaning in the Universe. He believes this search to be meaningless--hence the disintegration of plot, character, and language in absurdist drama. Order is a falsehood that we, God, those who came before us, have imposed on a random universe. However, the absurdist is confronted with a curious paradox: though he believes the Universe to be meaningless, he cannot abandon the search for meaning--or he will die.”

Believe Character Order Dies Universe Language Drama Concerned Curious Plot Abandon Paradox Meaningless Falsehood Search For Meaning Disintegration Those Who Came Before Us

Author:Walter Wykes

“We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.”

Way Ideas Character Use Reality Language Loses Depends Messages Tasks Strive Communicate Objectives Description Scope Discernment Our Words Suspended

Author:Niels Bohr

“He foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.”

Book Character Would Be Language

Book:Sherlock Holmes: The Novels: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Source: Sherlock Holmes: The Novels: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

“All the characters are made out of words. With reading, I understand that the people aren't real but the fact that they are made out of language and are made out of words is extremely powerful to me. It becomes transformative for me. Different people have different ways of trying to make stories using language.”

People Way Trying Made Different Real Character Facts Stories Reading Language Powerful Different Ways Different Peoples

Author:John Green

“A great character, founded on the living rock of principle is, in fact, not a solitary phenomenon, to be at once perceived, limited, and described. It is a dispensation of Providence, designed to have not merely an immediate, but a continuous, progressive, and never-ending agency. It survives the man who possessed it; survives his age,--and perhaps, his country, his language.”

Men Country Character Facts Age Language Principles Rocks He Man Agency Phenomenon Progressive Possessed Solitary Providence Never Ending Great Character

Book:Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions

Source: Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions

“I learned a long time ago that you don't have to go around using bad language and trying to hurt people to show how macho you are. That stuff won't get you anywhere, it just shows lack of vocabulary and character.”

People Trying Long Character Shows Language Stuff Hurt Long Time Nfl Vocabulary Long Time Ago Macho Bad Language

Book:More than just a game

Source: More than just a game

“Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods.”

Mean Character Facts Language Music Messages Music Is Understood Creator Contradictory

Author:Claude Levi-Strauss

“I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it "intently political." I'm just writing about the world I know, as it is. Wounds and griefs included.”

People Knows World Writing Matter Character Political Language Voice Grief No Matter What Structure Surprise Wounds Theme Surprise Me

Author:Barbara Kingsolver

“40 Words for Sorrow is brilliant-one of the finest crime novels I've ever read. Giles Blunt writes with uncommon grace, style and compassion and he plots like a demon. This book has it all-unforgettable characters, beautiful language, throat-constricting suspense.”

Writing Book Character Beautiful Language Compassion Novel Grace Style Crime Sorrow Brilliant Suspense Demon Plot Throat Finest Uncommon Blunt Unforgettable Crime Novels

Author:Jonathan Kellerman

“Sometimes I am a different character in different languages. I have different enjoyment from them. Sometimes different answers come out of me. Like, I didnt even know that about me. I get to know myself through different languages, actually.”

Knows Different Sometimes Character Language Answers Enjoyment Different Characters Different Languages

Author:Roger Federer

“Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.”

Character Language Built Plot Tickets

Author:Aimee Bender

“As a writer, I have to admit, there is something darkly compelling about Alzheimer's because it attacks the two things most central to a writer's craft - language and memory, which together make up an individual's identity. Alzheimer's makes a new character out of a familiar person.”

Persons Two Character Together Individual Language Memories Identity Familiar Crafts Two Things Compelling Alzheimer Alzheimer's

Author:Charlie Pierce

“The Bible is forbidding when you start to read it. The language is odd. The stories start and stop herkily-jerkily. The characters behave in inexplicable ways. It takes a little bit of time to get into the rhythm of the book. I found reading the first 15 chapters of Genesis very very difficult. Once I got past there, I loved reading, and found it very easy. When you get used to the Bible, it becomes thrilling to read (like any great book - I just had exactly the same experience with the Odyssey).”

Way Firsts Littles Book Character Stories Past Used Reading Found Language Easy Bits Difficult Little Bit Rhythm Odd Behave Chapters Thrilling Genesis Great Book Inexplicable Odyssey

Author:David Plotz

“For me, digital is just another avenue. It doesn't mean that it has to be poor quality or poor content. But, you still run into the same struggles. You can't have full-on language, violence or sexual situations. You can't run rampant with the fact that it's digital. You can't do anything you want. You still have a responsibility to tell a story first, and show what the character is going through first, and then maybe you have a little bit of lee-way to show a more real side of life.”

“Interesting, isn't it, that even though more than two and a half decades have passed since the sexual revolution brought women a new measure of sexual freedom, there's still no word in the language that doesn't reek with pejorative connotation to describe a woman who has sex freely. Since language frames thought and sets its limits, this is not a trivial matter. For without a word that describes without condemning, it's hard to think about it neutrally as well. When we say the words 'promiscuous woman,' therefore, it's a statement about her character, not just her sexual behavior.”

Thinking Wells Stills Two Matter Hard Character Language Sex Women Interesting Half Revolution Limits Behavior Decades Statements Condemning Connotation Promiscuous Sexual Revolution

Author:Lillian B. Rubin

“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child's life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”

Source: The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood

“Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”

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Language Quotes