Language Play Quotes

Always say 'no pun intended' to draw attention to the intended pun.

I love words; they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind.

I've always been a fan of poetry. I grew up with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Beat poets. I really followed that stuff for a while. I just love the way people threw words around like they were painting.

Walt Whitman, he who laid end to end words never seen in each other's company before outside of a dictionary.

Nothin'g sa'ys q'uality fantas'y l'ike misuse'd apos'tro'phes.

I get just as much of a thrill out of constructing a good sentence that gets a laugh at the end as I do from a joke.

I used to enjoy using dots where they would be least expected, not at the end of a sentence but in the middle, creating the effect... of a skipped beat. It seemed to me the mind reacted - first!... in dots, dashes, and exclamation points, then rationalized, drew up a brief, with periods.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

Americans don't like puns and plays on words, which is totally opposite in the comedy world to France or even Italy and Germany.

A friend of mine encouraged me to try rapping, so I started experimenting with it, writing verses, seeing if I could fit an extra word or syllable into each line without tripping myself up.

I'm crazy about Shakespeare, who was a notorious word inventor. And my wife is an English teacher, and she's hilarious.

I've never read an article of clothing.

I make up many words but we can go on for forever about slang words that E-40 created. That has always been one of my things since was youngster. I have always being creative with my words.

When it comes to being called a pronoun, sometimes I like to call other people 'me.' I go, like, 'Oh, these mes voted for Trump. This me is begging for change. This me is driving me to the airport.' I find that useful instead of going, like - because it's so pleasant to go 'you.'

I think that too many people think too much about my lyrics. I am more a person who works with the sound of a word than with its meaning. Often I just choose the words because of the rhythm not because of the meaning.

I'm bi-lots of things but lingual isn't one of them. Wait, did I mean to say that?

I love talking in an American accent. Even though it hurts my face after a few hours.

I have always been thinking about the sounds and shades and aromas of words - fitting them together or disrupting their customary march - more or less every second of my life, waking and sleeping.

In effect we are, bending and breaking the rules of the language. And if someone were to ask why we do it, the answer is simply: for fun

My dad hates umbrellas, said Deeba, swinging her own. When it rains he always says the same thing. 'I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society's usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked clubs at eye level.

I'd love Shakey Bill to tell me a story - I mean, William Shakespeare, he could squeak a nib couldn't he?

I was horribly bookish, to the point of coming right out and saying it, which I knew was not socially acceptable. I particularly loved the adjective bookish, which I found other people used about as often as ramrod or chum or teetotaler.

A good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

I always think about myself as a writer; that comes out of being a reader first, and I don't think I kind of got to really playing with language in any formal way probably until I was in my mid-twenties.

Pete and Repeat were sitting on a wall. Pete fell off. Who was left? Repeat.