Quotes about words

Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you... The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable.

When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life.

Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work.

I closed my eyes, put blinders on, and ignored what was too painful to think about. I tried to view my troubles less seriously, and worry less. I tried to curb my temper. Things said in embarrassment and anger are seldom the truth, but are said to hurt and wound the other person. Once said, they can never be taken back.

Being in love we often pay no attention whatsoever to the substance of what lover says, while being intoxicated to ecstasy by the way it's said”

I stood in the harsh electric light of that new tunnel, in Bombay's Arthur Road Prison, and I wanted to laugh. Hey guys, I wanted to say, can't you be a little more original? But I couldn't speak. Fear dries a man's mouth, and hate strangles him. That's why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.

For now I had begun to believe, despite all the talk of science around me, that there was a magic in spoken words.

Words are everything and don't you forget it, ever.

It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time? (p. 279)

Words never mean what we want them to mean.

I said, I want to tell you something She said, you can tell me tomorrow I had never told her how much I loved her. She was my sister. We slept in the same bed. There was never a right time to say it. It was always unnecessary. I thought about waking her. But it was unnecessary. There would be other nights. And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary. I love you. Grandma.

There is something indecent in words.