Terry Pratchett Quotes

A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.

The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.

What language are you talking in now? It appears to be bollocks.

… sledgehammer eloquence...

I have to slow down for some people. In Louisiana, people didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I remember seeing people glaze over. Seeing the moment where they've just completely lost all... They just wait for me to stop talking and then say, 'Yeah.'

I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.

Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others).

Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?

I have learnt to appreciate the clarity of English language.

I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter.

Words are so awesome. Words are containers for power. They carry either creative power or destructive power.

Unlike the ambiguity of life, the ambiguity of language does reach a limit.

Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don't know how to read.

To the world's most perfect woman. It was lucky my father was not present. Perfect is an absolute that cannot be modified, like unique or pregnant. My love for Rosie was so powerful that it had caused my brain to make a grammatical error.

Writing cannot express all words, words cannot encompass all ideas.

She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical powder or potion that could be combined with other words to create powerful spells.

I have making a new film called Story of Your Life, directed by Denis Villeneuve, with Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker. Which is about aliens coming to the earth and observing us and us trying to find a way to communicate with them.

Language is a weapon, keep it honed!

That's part of that thing of transcending languages. Every person will have their own language.

It is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies.

False language, evil in itself, infects the soul with evil.

Guido Natso is natso guido.

I speak the truth but I guess that's a foreign language to ya'll!

Think in terms of images and words. They can be mighty powerful when they are fitted together properly.