Saul Williams Quotes

…only a poet could frame a language that could frame a world.

The main impetus for being a writer is thinking, 'I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.'

I enjoy the inventive ways in which language is manipulated to make meaning.

If a writer doesn't do anything but give a new word to his language and, from there, maybe to other languages, I think that writer redefines the world.

Words are what created our world. Words are what keep it going.

Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true.

When I wrote, I felt better, as if I had remade the world all of a piece, the way I wanted it to be, not the way it was.

I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness.

The great thing about writing is, if you don't like the world, we'll create a different one.

The rebel is committed to giving a form and pattern to the world. It is a pattern born of the indomitable thrust of the human mind, the mind which makes out of the mass of meaningless data in the world an order and a form.

The best I do, if I'm just playing around and riffing in a fantasy world, and then I'll write something down. Hopefully I write it down.

The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.

To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.

I used to go outside every day and invent these elaborate worlds and scenarios in my head, and when I grew too old for playing pretend, I started to write everything down instead.

For once, you're going to hear something that doesn't fit into your neat, compartmentalized world of order and logic and reason.

Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world.

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

I kind of like the idea of taking a concept and going all the way with it, even if it's not completely plausible. It's something that I like about making movies. You have a concept that maybe would not work in real life, but you can make it work in the world you're creating.

I think that is one of the first things that I got clear in my mind when I began to play around with fiction, that I had to find a language and it was not in existance at the time. You have put it very well - it wasn't to be taken for granted. You had to go on and search until you found a way through the conversation of English and Igbo. The two languages stuck into each other and tried to find a way to express through one, the medium of the thoughts. That's a very exciting thing to do, a very difficult thing to do.

If I were in a position to announce a public competition to coin a new word, I would do so right now.

Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.

I like making films because I like to go into another world. I like to get lost into another world.

You write in order to change the world.