Language Quotes - Page 10

Cat's friends seemed like very sweet girls," Dad says.
"They were the bomb," I say fervently, and he looks back at me with raised eyebrows.
"'The bomb' is a good thing? Like 'sick'?
"Duh," I reply, and Dad lets out a sigh.
"Thirteen-year-olds should come with subtitles," he says, turning onto our street.

Jokes are many things. 'Funny' is only one of them.

We sit and talk,
quietly, with long lapses of silence
and I am aware of the stream
that has no language, coursing
beneath the quiet heaven of
your eyes
which has no speech

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!

Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.

The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.

that your power of command
with simple language was
one of the magnificent things of
our century.
(from the poem: result)

Language is fossil Poetry.

In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.

I would like The Discovery of Poetry to be a field guide to the natural pleasures of language - a happiness we were born to have.

The subtleties of the mind cannot be transmitted in words, but can be seen in words.

According to [Galway] Kinnell, to make a poem you need the creatures of the world, language, and the unconsious brought together.

Love’s language starts, stops, starts;
the right words flowing or clotting in the heart.

A poet is a verb that blossoms light in gardens of dawn, or sometimes midnight.

Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity.

I did not foresee my words becoming such a reverie of mimic and refrain.

Know what you are talking about.

Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what's in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there's always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.

[…] marginile unei cărţi nu sunt niciodată clar şi riguros trasate: dincolo de titlu, de primele rânduri şi de punctul final, mai presus de configuraţia sa internă şi de forma care îi conferă autonomie, ea se află prinsă într-un sistem de trimiteri la alte cărţi, la alte texte, la alte fraze: este un nod într-o reţea.