Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

I love the musicality of English. French sounds flat. In English, you can play with pitch.

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, 'Blah, blah, blah.' That's when I get crazy.

I know I have a problem with semi-colon abuse and have written page-long sentences. Nobody needs to be reading page-long sentences, at least not written by me.

I am gennerally understood tho I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons etc.

I'm aware now over the last 5 or 10 years that when you do an accent, you really have to kind of get down to the nitty gritty and go into the phonetics of it, if necessary. Find out not just the sounds but the rhythms and the music - or lack thereof - in a particular accent.

Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession.

There wasn't much technical terminology, and then, most academics are not trained in writing. And there is what is probably worse than ever before, the growing use of professional jargon.

I don't really care about a song or lyrics; I'm really just interested in the way people emphasize words. That's what makes a strong impact on me.

Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.

I'm a 'frotteur,' someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible. Does that word in this sentence have any electric potential? Does it do anything? Too much electricity will make your reader's hair frizzy. There's a question of pacing.

Every sentence stands on its own. Whether that's fair or not, that's kind of the way it is.

Choose each word as a precision tool. Consider how it sounds, not how it reads.

I think my writing changed when I put 'the' in front of my titles. It had more command.

Dull words are what make many bright sentences shine. They do not call attention to themselves.

I enjoy finding the right word and giving each its full measure, its full space in a sentence.

When the public doesn't understand me, it's a battle. So when I choose words, I choose them for their musicality, rhythm, and sense, and I choose the right dialect to express that.

A circuit performed by a capital and meant to be a periodical process, not an individual act, is called its turnover. The duration of this turnover is determined by the sum of its time of production and its time of circulation.

I'm very concerned with questions of language. This is what I think of when I think of myself as a writer: I'm someone who writes sentences and paragraphs. I think of the sentence - not only what it shares but, in a sense, what it looks like. I like to match words not only in a way that convey a meaning, possibly an indirect meaning, but even at times words that have a kind of visual correspondence.

Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-and-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon.

He wished someone in the course of history had thought of striking that word and all its derivatives from the English Language - happy, happier, happiest, happiness. What the devil did the words really mean anyway? Why not just the word pleasure, which was far more... well, pleasant.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

All individuals have the same value, not to be determined by market price. They're made in the image and likeness of God.

The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken.

Nobody owes anybody anything; it's up to each individual to set high standards for himself or herself, and to set about working hard and creating a solid future.