Adrienne Rich Quotes

Language is the most beautiful and destructive thing because it allows you to express yourself, but it totally confuses everything.

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.

Being that can be understood is language.

A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

My use of language is part and parcel of my message.

According to my wife, my use of vocabulary is wide and varied.

When people speak their own language you get a much better sense of who they are.

Symbols are important.

Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of what we wear and what we eat and all the things that mark us, and in the end, what we have are our words.

All people in the world - who are not hermits or mutes - speak words. They speak different languages, but they speak words. They say, "How are you" or "I'm not feeling well" all over the world. These common words - these common elements that we have between us - the writer has to take some verbs and nouns and pronouns and adjectives and adverbs and arrange them in a way that sound fresh.

Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.

Language. By this we build pyramids, fight battles, ordain and administer laws, shape and teach religion, and knit man to man, cultivate each other, and ourselves.

The tongue of man is a twisty thing, there are plenty of words there of every kind.

Language transcends us and yet we speak.

The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.

Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.

Language is our way of communicating what we want and who we are.

In a world of more brilliance words don't mean anything.

You can't eat language but it eases thirst.

Adjectives are the curse of America.

Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

I had always suspected language was quite limited in its ability to communicate the intricate mysteries of truth.