David Lehman Quotes

In common use almost every word has many shades of meaning, and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context.

Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around.

The more you try to pin a word down, the more you realize that it has its own cape, sword and little hat.

Words have a life of their own. There is no telling what they will do. Within a matter of days, they can even turn turtle and mean the opposite.

Much of the magic of language, of course, lies in its fluidity.

Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world.

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

Whatever the framers … intended, there is no reason to believe that they possessed the best insights or ultimate wisdom as to the meaning of their words for subsequent generations ... Words do not have fixed meanings.

All my plays have these titles that are oddly tricky. I like that something can look like one thing but mean two different things. Language is really unstable in that way.

The Elizabethan mind wanted and demanded that one word could mean 50 things. What Shakespeare offers us is not ambiguity; it's choices.

Literally' - I'm not having it; people can't go around saying 'literally.' Otherwise, what's literal? There's not another word for literally: if it isn't figurative or metaphorical, what is it? It's literal: there's no substitute.

I'm well-read as far as literary fiction, but I wanted to make better decisions about my writing, to use words or phrases more confidently by learning how your words can be interpreted, the shades of meaning, the different connotations.

One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.

Sovereign," like "love," means anything you want it to mean; it's a word in dictionary between "sober" and "sozzled.

A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.

You know sometimes words have two meanings.

Ger-mans love the ambiguous word, verbal assonances as ends in themselves,vague concepts. Anglosaxons are more clear.

A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

Human languages tend to be much more ambiguous than computer languages because humans are much smarter about interpreting the context.

who says dog means dog?

Why should it not be the whole function of a word to denote many things?

A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight.

A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.

The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, "is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life.

The word and the shadow of the word / makes a thing both itself and something else / till we are metaphors and not ourselves . . .