Quotes about words

Such is the power of words, of writing, of books. Words you loved and will always yearn for. They can inspire you with possibilities you otherwise would have never imagined; they can fill your head with misleading fantasies. They can give you back your seemingly seamless past and place it right alongside your chaotic present.

“But that only happens in books,” my mother, pretty much immune to the power of the written word, would say.

Exactly. That’s why I can’t stop reading them.

It wouldn’t be the first time his sharp tongue had cut his own throat.

Words are the only bullets in truth’s bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

Of course it sounds very foolish. Dreams do sound so foolish when they are put into cold brutal words.

Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.

I once heard an elder say that the dead who have no use for their words leave them as part of their children's inheritance. Proverbs, teeth suckings, obscenities, even grunts and moans once inserted in special places during conversations, all are passed along to the next heir. (p265)

Who was it who said that a wise man speaks when he has something to say, but a fool speaks because he must?

Without speech, thoughts plough on like a train without tracks, buckling, crashing, ripping everything apart.

I can love a stone, Govinda, and a tree or a piece of bark. These are things and one can love things. But one cannot love words. … Also with this great teacher, the thing to me is of greater importance than the words; his deeds and life are more important to me than his talk, the gesture of his hand is more important to me than his opinions. Not in speech or thought do I regard him as a great man, but in his deeds and life.

The plague came to be called Yellow Mantle. Men must name everything, as if, by giving it a name, they will decrease the nameless horror they experience.

This sight was terrible, more terrible than words convey, for words are cowards as men are, and hide things as men do.

Spells are words, and words are merely noises. You are the sorceress, not your instruction. Don’t limit yourself.