Celeste Ng Quotes

When we use terms we get confused, yet we have no other way.

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

There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.

Translation is the art of failure.

I am a candid interview and I have a dark and dry sense of humor - a very Canadian sense of humor and I am only learning now stupidly that you can't read tongue. When I say something funny in a newspaper and I meant it to be funny, it doesn't read that way.

I'm interested in the murky areas where there are no clear answers - or sometimes multiple answers. It's here that I try to imagine patterns or codes to make sense of the unknowns that keep us up at night. I'm also interested in the invisible space between people in communication; the space guided by translation and misinterpretation.

Silence is a statement that is open to gross misinterpretation.

Everybody in this public arena makes statements and gets interpreted different ways.

The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

I cannot be understood in three minutes.

Journalists never make it clear when you are joking.

Words fall short sometimes.

More has been screwed up on the battlefield and misunderstood in the Pentagon because of a lack of understanding of the English language than any other single factor.

We find few disputes, that are not founded on some ambiguity in the expression [thereof].

Who hears wrong, replies wrong.

We have to realize that when we talk in front of other people about things only we can understand, those people will not be able to avoid getting wrong impressions.

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

If any syllable that I utter might be interpreted in 13,000 different ways, then the best way for me to never be tarred and feathered is to never open my mouth. So the next time that someone calls on me for an opinion, you know what? I won't say a thing.

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.

Well, usually when a person shakes their head," said McGonagall coldly, "they mean 'no.' So unless Miss Edgecombe is using a form of sign language as yet unknown to humans.

Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.

It was strange how you could never form any conclusion from what women said. It was not that they did not know what they were talking about, but you never drew the right conclusions.