Brian Azzarello Quotes

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

I write in American slang.

The British have slang words, as we do, but it was fun.

My songs have some street talk in them, but that's the way I talk and the way a lot of people I know talk.

I'm really fascinated by lingos and colloquialisms that are outmoded and have gone by the wayside. I love the way people spoke in the '30s, and the amazing slang of the mid-'60s and '70s.

I think we invent jargon because it saves times talking to one-another.

I found a great book called 'Slang Through the Ages' by Jonathon Green. It's basically a thesaurus of historical slang, and had lots of great old uses.

Jargon: any technical language we do not understand.

We are surrounded by hundreds of 'tribes,' each speaking their own distinct slanguage of colourful words, jokes and phrases that together form an idiosyncratic phrasebook, years in the making.

I have this little thing that people call Keegan-ese, where I don't speak English words at all. I just say stuff like, "You gotta toish the doish and you gotta maloish the hoish."

The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.

Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their way to the dumps.

Language is my bugbear. Everyone says things now like 'I was sat' instead of 'I was sitting', which just sounds so ugly.

It's Fifty, not Fiddy.

Buzzwords and cliches - those are stock in trade. There's nothing wrong with them.

People love to drop in 'you betcha' as often as they can.

People talk in ungrammatical, unwriterly ways.

Catchphrases flourish in contemporary American English.

I hear it all the time in the street: 'It's the crisp bloke.'

Slang is really coded talk. I can say a few things, in front of somebody, that only people who know what I'm saying are going to pick up on.

Slang moves on so fast that most new words disappear soon after they are coined. But there is always something that sticks behind.

Language is ever on the move, and most days, I check out the 'Urban Dictionary' where anyone can invent a new and useful word or phrase.

Slang has different functions: many of the words we use are playful and a lot are tribal - we speak the same way as the groups we are part of. A great deal are also euphemistic, so it's no surprise that a third of us are perplexed by their meanings and origins.

I've found that there are only two kinds that are any good: slang that has established itself in the language, and slang that you make up yourself. Everything else is apt to be passe before it gets into print.

I know all the new phrases: 'cowabunga,' 'radical,' cat's pajamas,' 'duh,' and 'hey, homie don't play that.