Dictionary Quotes

The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.

Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use.

The mere presence in the dictionary of a word like 'living' does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world.

To creative people, the compendium of the white man's dialect are unfashionable, because their creations are more than what the tongue could say.

You're like a dictionary. You know the word is in there, but you need to know how to spell what you want first

I had a cousin once who lived in your dictionary, inside the binding, and there was a tiny hole which he used for a door, and it led out between trichotomy and trick. Now what do you think of that? It was only a few minutes walk to trigger, then over the page to trinity, trinket and trional, and there my cousin used to fall asleep.

breathtaking, adj.

Those mornings when we kiss and surrender for an hour before we say a single word.

If it's any consolation, Princess, I think he's a supercilious, salacious sap."
"You've been reading the dictionary!"
"My only hope of comprehending your conversation, my petite sesquipedalian.

I don't understand your book. Isn't every book a book of words?

People are laughing at me today for having holes in my pockets, and ink blood on my fingers-
a thirty-something old writer, who strangles words from dictionaries, and feeds on the decay of poetry.

Empty teacups gathered around her and dictionary pages fell at her feet.