emotional impact of language Quotes

Talking like touching. Writing like punching somebody.

I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.

I feel like you have to be so precise in what you are going to say, or you can be hammered if you say it the wrong way. That part makes feel bummed out because sometimes these things can take a while to figure out. Different people formulate things in different ways and have different processes. I feel like let's just take a deep breath and not be so perfectionistic about it all.

You and I must realize that the English language is filled with words that, in addition to their literal meanings, convey distinct emotional intensity. For example, if you develop a habit of saying you 'hate' things - you 'hate' your hair; you 'hate' your job; you 'hate' having to do something - do you think this raises the intensity of your negative emotional states more than if you use a phrase like 'I prefer something else'?

In the ensuing silence, I have time to contemplate the word cute— how dismissive it is, how it’s the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, “Feel Bad About Yourself.

I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something - a great deal - to do with how we live our lives.

Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind? Who knows why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, though the same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised.

Some words were like that. Whole lives attached to them. Ghosts and lives and ecstasy and sorrow.

Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.

Words aren't hurting anybody. Words are not causing any damage, not expressly and not directly. But we're so focused on the words.

Weapons are less harmful than words.