Dovah Language Quotes

The others who'd been hanging around had eased back a bit, in their own conversations now as Jairo and the blond spoke very closely, their body language intimate. Huh. Jairo the naughty nurse has got some game. The ~ Darien Cox

Not saying everything you think isn't about choosing to allow your body language to do the talking instead of speaking your thoughts aloud. It's about refraining from both! Keeping quiet and still. ~ Doug Fields

X, n. In our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language. ~ Ambrose Bierce

...yet the truly unique feature of our language is not its ability to transmit information about men and lions. Rather, it's the ability to transmit information about things that do not exist at all. As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled. ~ Marvinn Land

BOOK BEAUTY

Here's the end of that story about the old woman who wanted to lure a man with strange

cosmetics. She made a paste of pages from the Qur'an to fill the deep creases on her face and

neck with. This is not about an old woman, dear reader. It's about you, or anyone who tries

to use books to make themselves attractive. There she is, sticking scripture, thick with

saliva, on her face. Of course, the bits keep falling off. "The devil," she yells, and

he appears! "This is a trick I've never seen. You don't need me. You are yourself a troop

of demons!" So people steal inspired words to get compliments. Don't bother. Death comes

and all talking, stolen or not, stops. Pity anyone unfamiliar with silence when that happens.

Polish your heart with mediation and quietness. Let the inner life grow generous and handsome

like Joseph. Zuleika did that and her "old woman's spring cold snap" turned to mid-July. Dry

lips wet from within. Ink is not rouge. Let language lie bygone. Now is where love breathes. ~ Rumi

The problem with object-oriented languages is they've got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle. ~ Joe Armstrong

The concept of a writer writing a vivid and accurate scene in a language transparent and devoid of decoration so that we see through to the object without writerly distraction suffers the same contradiction as the concept of a painter painting a vivid and accurate scene with pigments transparent and devoid of color, including white and black - so that the paint will not get between us and the picture. ~ Samuel R. Delany

To understand the real meaning of what others want to say to us, we must understand which 'language game' they are playing. ~ Prem Jagyasi

I found in investigative journalism it is always best, if you have any language skills, not to admit them. ~ Julian Assange

Something strange is happening to me: I find myself becoming lighter and less cynical. People use sarcasm and I don't immediately pick up on it, because I don't use it anymore. When people do, it's as if I'm hearing a language I spoke fluently in my childhood, but have since lost. And I just find Woody Allen creepy. ~ Mara Wilson

He lives at Balbec? crooned the Baron in a tone so far from interrogatory that it is regrettable that the written language does not possess a sign other than the question mark to end such apparently unquestioning remarks. It is true that such a sign would be of little use except to M. de Charlus. ~ Marcel Proust

When you get into the third or fourth generation of Latino immigrants to the United States, you see the kids speaking more English than Spanish, and it's important that we don't lose our identity, our language. ~ Thalia

We should all consider each other as human beings, and we should respect each other. ~ Malala Yousafzai

As we shall see, the tractable apostrophe has always done its proper jobs in our language with enthusiasm and elegance, but it has never been taken seriously enough; its talent for adaptability has been cruelly taken for granted; and now, in an age of supreme graphic frivolity, we pay the price. ~ Lynne Truss

God doesn't expect us to perform for him. He loves us always-when we're disappointed or hurt or making a mess of things. Sometimes we speak to him in a language that only he can understand. What matters to him is that we are vulnerable, that we are completely ourselves. We are work, too, but God cherishes us. ~ Luci Swindoll

Words never fail. We hear them, we read them; they enter into the mind and become part of us for as long as we shall live. Who speaks reason to his fellowmen bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders thought for all who listen. There must be some minimum allowable dose of inanity beyond which the mind cannot remain reasonable. Irrationality, like buried chemical waste, sooner or later must seep into all the tissues of thought. ~ Richard Mitchell

Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law. ~ June Jordan

As a linguist, I don't think of Ada as a big language. Now, English and Japanese, those are big languages. Ada is just a medium-sized language. ~ Larry Wall

I think the language of sacrifice is particularly important for societies like the United States in which war remains our most determinative common experience, because states like the United States depend on the story of our wars for our ability to narrate our history as a unified story. ~ Stanley Hauerwas

The official language of the State of Illinois shall be known hereafter as the American language, and not the English language. ~ Frank Church

I try to write about how we live today, how we use language, technology, our bodies. ~ Dana Spiotta

Lies, fictions and untrue suppositions can create new human truths which build technology, art, language, everything that is distinctly of Man. The word "stone" for instance is not a stone, it is an oral pattern of vocal, dental and labial sounds or a scriptive arrangement of ink on a white surface, but man pretends that it is actually the thing it refers to. Every time he wishes to tell another man about a stone he can use the word instead of the thing itself. The word bodies forth the object in the mind of the listener and both speaker and listener are able to imagine a stone without seeing one. All the qualities of stone can be metaphorically and metonymically expressed. "I was stoned, stony broke, stone blind, stone cold sober, stonily silent," oh, whatever occurs. More than that, a man can look at a stone and call it a weapon, a paperweight, a doorstep, a jewel, an idol. He can give it function, he can possess it. ~ Stephen Fry

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. ~ Annie Dillard

Something she and her husband had in common but rarely discussed was the absence of a desire for children, to fill their home with people besides themselves. It was a silent agreement, felt rather than spoken, and in her experience the soundest agreements were the ones that did not require the reassurances of language. Therefore this line of questioning was the inverse of what she usually fielded, since a childless married woman in her thirties was so often regarded, by men and women alike, as a puzzle or a pity. What's the story here? people would ask, inquests designed to make women like her suspect there was something malformed inside, blinding them to the hideous reality of their choice. ~ Laura Van Den Berg

Overdrive for a girl I barely know, all because she's the first person I've met who seems to speak my language. A few words of it anyway. ~ Jennifer Niven

I really love folklore. I had read a lot of faerie folklore that informed the books I wrote. I also really love vampire folklore; my eighth grade research paper was on [it]. [With this project,] it was really helpful to think about the way you can use language. When you're writing about faeries, you can't call anyone "fey"; there are certain words that become forbidden because they're actualized in what faeries do. When you write about vampires, you could think the same way about things like the word "red" or "hunger"
it's interesting to think of the ways that the words have double meanings, or different meanings that shifted. ~ Holly Black

And what do you know, John's hands flew through the positions
of ASL in various l-got-this combinations.
"Is he deaf" the guy behind the cash register asked in a stage
whisper. As if someone using American Sign Language was some kind
of freak.
"No. Blind."
"Oh."
As the man kept staring, Qhuinn wanted to pop him. "You going
to help us out here or what?"
"Oh ... yeah. Hey, you got a tattoo on your face." Mr. Observant
moved slowly, like the bar codes on those bags were creating some kind of wind resistance under his laser reader. "Did you know that?"
Really. "I wouldn't know."
'Are you blind, too?"
No filter on this guy. None. "Yeah, I am."
"Oh, so that's why your eyes are all weird."
"Yeah. That's right."
Qhuinn took out a twenty and didn't wait for change-murder
was just a liiiiiittle too tempting. Nodding to John, who was also measuring the dear boy for a shroud, Qhuinn went to walk off.
"What about your change ?" the man called out.
"I'm deaf, too. I can't hear you."
The guy yelled more loudly, "I'll just keep it then, yeah?"
"Sounds good," Qhuinn shouted over his shoulder.
Idiot was stage-five stupid. Straight up. ~ J.R. Ward

To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Toxemia. A word that starts so harsh and ends so gently. ~ Emma Hooper

English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Every word, every gesture is now loaded with ambiguity, nothing can be taken at face value. We speak to each other from a safe distance, pretending all the years we soaped each other's backs and pissed in front of each other never happened. We don't use any of the baby talk, code words, or short hand gestures that had been our language of intimacy, the proof that we belonged to each other. ~ Amy Tan

If the third dimension and perceptions of sacredness are an important part of human nature, then the scientific community should accept religiosity as a normal and healthy aspect of human nature - an aspect that is as deep, important, and interesting as sexuality or language (which we study intensely). Here's another treasonous thought: If religious people are right in believing that religion is the source of their greatest happiness, then maybe the rest of us who are looking for happiness and meaning can learn something from them, whether or not we believe in God. That's the topic of the final chapter. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Teach her to question language. Language is the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs, our assumptions. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

He senses a certain receptivity in her expression, like she's gathering information about his feelings, something they have learned to do to each other over a long time, like speaking a private language. ~ Sally Rooney

Because I am a storyteller I live by words. Perhaps music is a purer art form. It may be that when we communicate with life on another planet, it will be through music, not through language or words. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

I can explain, There's no need, I've been keeping regular track of your activities, and, besides, your notebook has been a great help to me, may I take the opportunity to congratulate you on the excellent style and the appropriateness of the language, I'll hand in my resignation tomorrow, I won't accept it. ~ Jose Saramago

In the Apache language there is no word for 'guilt.' Our lives are like diamonds. When we are born we are pure and uncut. Each thing that happens to us in our lives teaches us how to reflect the light in the world; each experience gives us a new cut, a new facet in our diamond. How brilliantly do those diamonds sparkle whose facets are many, to whom life has given many cuts! ~ Daniel J. O’Leary Quoting Bearwatcher, An Apache Medicine Man