Linguistic Habit Quotes

Listen: People are always saying, 'Rickey says Rickey.' But it's been blown way out of proportion. People might catch me, when they know I'm ticked off, saying, 'Rickey, what the heck are you doing, Rickey?' They say, 'Darn, Rickey, what are you saying Rickey for? Why don't you just say, 'I?' But I never did. I always said, 'Rickey,' and it become something for people to joke about.

I overuse words. My kids catch me saying stuff. They're like, 'Hey, you say that all the time.' 'Boom' is one of those things.

The poems ... are moments when I had the intensity to see, and the energy to build, some careful analog that completed the seeing. ... All I have been left is the exhausting habit of trying to tack up the slack in my life with words.

I go through phases where I'll overuse words. S.E. Hinton, who wrote The Outsiders - she and I have been in contact for the 50th anniversary of the book - and she said, "You still owe me the 10 dollars that we bet that you couldn't stop saying the word 'gnarly.'"

When I hear an interview that I've done, and I've said 'like' a bunch of times, it just cheapens the sentiment.

I have been told I say 'shucks' quite frequently... Shucks, I'll have to work on that.

Weirdly, I didn't even know that I said 'yah' all the time.

A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it's employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.

I don't like when I say 'honestly' - not to imply that I'm otherwise not honest.

Thought itself needs words. It runs on them like a long wire. And if it loses the habit of words, little by little it becomes shapeless, somber.

Americans like to add the word 'super' when they're describing things.

I know I've said, 'Do you know what I mean?' an awful lot, and every time I've said it, I've cringed inside.