Quotes for All
The enterprise of describing something in language that has never been described before is a very difficult thing to do. When you decide to do away with old cliches or old phraseologies, and to come up with a new way of saying something, it’s extremely difficult. Gao Xingjian
The human need for language is not simply for the transmission of meaning, it is at the same time listening to and affirming a person’s existence. Gao Xingjian
Language is inherently not concerned with logic. As an expression of the psychological activities of humankind, it simply follows a linear process as it seeks actualisation. Moreover, it does not obey the objective concepts of time and space that belong to the physical world. When the discussion of time and space is imported into linguistic … Read more
A good work can be communicated across languages … [provided one does not] fall into the trap of narrow-minded nationalistic or chauvinistic thinking. Gao Xingjian
I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my … Read more
The laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics. Galileo Galilei
The chief merit of language is clearness. Galen
The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms. Galen
I had decided I wanted to write about food, and I knew the only way to do that is to speak with authority, which meant learning the language and knowing what that experience is like. Gail Simmons
Dreams say what they mean, but they don’t say it in daytime language. Gail Godwin