Meaningful Language Quotes

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

I believe words mean something. I really do.

If language did not affect behavior, it could have no meaning.

Hank Cochran was a man of very few words, but certainly the words that he chose were the right ones to use.

You can't hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the brain.

The single most important lesson of effective communication is this: Focus on clarity. Concentrate on precisions. Don’t worry about constructing beautiful sentences. Beauty comes from meaning, not language. Accuracy is the most effective style of all.

Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

Words have life and must be cared for. If they are stolen for ugly uses or careless slang or false promotion work, they need to be brought back to their original meaning - back to their roots.

Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.

I find it difficult to believe that words have no meaning in themselves, hard as I try. Habits of a lifetime are not lightly thrown aside.

What I value in books is lucidity. I want the language to be rich; I love lexical fireworks on the page, but I have to know what it means. I want to be surprised and delighted, not merely baffled.

A word in season is most precious.

For Stevie, the words are of prime importance; the song moves around the words, rather than the words moving around the song.

Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order.

I love when I dive into lyrics that give me human complexity and intricate narrative.

You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.

When you use words loosely, without care and consideration, you erode trust in yourself and in what you're saying. When you squander words, you diminish your power.

Unfaithful to their meanings, words perturb our perturb our powers of reason ... the only safe words are our words.

From the throes of inspiration and the eddies of thought the poet may at last be able to arrive at, and convey the right admixture of words and meaning.

There are no actions involved in 'beautiful.' It's such an inactive thing, and it's so subject to each individual's taste and appreciation. It's a lovely word, but I feel like it's been hijacked by really boring, dull people who don't understand how to use words.

Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

I had spend a lot of time looking at things intellectually, coming from the head, let's say, rather than the heart, and saying things that way. Turns of phrases became paramount to any kind of feeling behind them, which is not to say they were all devoid of that.

I love revising things, because you see how you can get the language to get closer to intention. You know there are three ways to say X thing, but one will say it better than the other two. And in saying it better, it gets you closer to something.

It's important to be precise about words, because of the thought value of them-they frame and shape so much of the way we understand things.