Katherine Dunn Quotes

Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.

Language is the dress of thought.

Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.

You think, you don't just speak. The lines come off the thoughts.

It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself.

Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.

Isn't telling about something-using words, English or Japanese-already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?

Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.

We do not learn first what to talk about and then what to say about it.

Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.

Words are the small change of thought.

One of the things that writing and speech can do is express what we're thinking one thought at a time.

Man can no more think without words than see without light.

The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.

Damn words; they're just the pots and pans of life, the pails and scrubbing-brushes. I wish I didn't have to think in words.

We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

The best clue to what a person thinks is what he says.

As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought.

By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.

We think in language. The quality of our thoughts and ideas can only be as good as the quality of our language.

you don't know what you think unless you say it.