Terrance Hayes Quotes

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

Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

I'm very interested in language because it reflects our obsessions and ways of conceptualising the world.

Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change.

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they have been in.

Something's that written out is okay, but it's not always a clear indication of what a person means.

Language is a tool adequate to provide any degree of precision relevant to a particular situation.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Words are things, but things which mean. We cannot do away with meaning without doing away with signs, that is, with language itself. Moreover, we would have to do away with the universe. All the things man touches are impregnated with meaning.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed.

Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.

I love language, and I love the failure of language.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

The medium is not the message - the message is the message.

We need words to name and designate things. But we have only a static language with which to express ourselves.

Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

Words are slippery and thoughts are vicious.

Symbols are important.

A picture can say a thousand words but maybe not the correct ones.

Language is powerful. Words matter.

My mother introduced to me as a child the world of language: the way in which translation can be a system by which you can understand others.

For human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born.

Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.