Verlyn Klinkenborg Quotes

It's really important how you say things because people won't necessarily remember what words you used, but they'll remember how you made them feel.

If it's one thing we learned from the first book, it's that you don't have to be a prizefighter, or a world-renowned architect, or a concert violinist to have been affected by the power of words.

The secret of life was Breath. That was what I always wanted my words to do, to Breathe.

To me, a poem is almost like someone whispering to another person, or you hear the whispering in your head. I hope with my own poems that the reader feels a connection, soul to soul, that'll help us all feel a little less alone on the planet. And it does have the power to direct change. A writer can make the word 'dark' be something positive. You can relieve a word like 'hysterical' of its misogynistic implications. You can make the language your own. That's what poetry is about.

Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

Words are so lovable. How could you not love words?

I can't claim to 'understand' 'Byzantium,' if any dance work can be 'understood,' but whenever I see it, I sense that it's charged with meaning.

What moves me in art is how we question who we are as people.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

I want to suggest a feeling. It's ridiculous to assume you can state an opinion. Somebody else can never relate to the lyric in the same way because their whole experience is different. You can only suggest, then people add their own history and experience to the lyrics.

If you can even manage to tell exactly what a song is about, all you do is put that song in a box forever, and it loses its evocative power.

I have never had a problem with people not being able to understand the words and the meanings in Titus.

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

Words are slippery and thoughts are vicious.

It is important to consider that the horror movies should - like modern art - not have a too obvious meaning. When you watch them, it is more important what you feel than what you understand.

I think that's what poets try to do: They try to sidestep neurology and go straight to meaning.

Because the beauty of songs, I think, is if you do it right a lot of people can relate to it in their own way and make their own meaning out of things.

The songs always tell you something, but always for different reasons.

Reading is not walking on the words; it's grasping the soul of them.

I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things.

The words that are coming out of my mouth and how I mean them, it's so much different.