Wordplay Quotes

Loser lit antiheroes aren't well intentioned or earnest; they don't care whether you like them or not. They're self-mocking, ironic and inventive; they narrate their downfalls with manic wordplay, rampant metaphors, wisecracks, and escalating flights of spleen-fueled lyricism. ~ Kate Christensen

I don't think you understand," said Milo timidly as the watchdog growled a warning. "We're looking for a place to spend the night."
"It's not yours to spend," the bird shrieked again, and followed it with the same horrible laugh.
"That doesn't make any sense, you see - " he started to explain.
"Dollars or cents, it's still not yours to spend," the bird replied haughtily.
"But I didn't mean - " insisted Milo.
"Of course you're mean," interrupted the bird, closing the eye that had been open and opening the one that had been closed. "Anyone who'd spend a night that doesn't belong to him is very mean."
"Well, I thought that by - " he tried again desperately.
"That's a different story," interjected the bird a bit more amiably. "If you want to buy, I'm sure I can arrange to sell, but with what you're doing you'll probably end up in a cell anyway."
"That doesn't seem right," said Milo helplessly, for, with the bird taking everything the wrong way, he hardly knew what he was saying.
"Agreed," said the bird, with a sharp click of his beak, "but neither is it left, although if I were you I would have left a long time ago. ~ Norton Juster

Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

tomorrow's gone-we'll have tonight! ~ Dorothy Parker

Scots from hogtowns or cowtowns work from cockcrow to moondown -- to chop down woodlots, to plow down cornrows. ~ Christian Bök

It took my whole life to buy this stuff. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Yes, I think he even has a title. He's like son and heir.'

I turned her words over in my mind as I pretended to play with my phone.

Sun and hair
Son and heir
Sun and air ~ Olivia Sudjic

...from Emerson's journals. In the context, it is written in the past tense; changing the verb to present tense it reads: The poem is a confession of faith. Which is to say, the poem is not an exercise. It is not 'wordplay.' Whatever skill or beauty it has, in contains something beyond language devices, and has a purpose other than itself. ~ Mary Oliver

Shortcoming shouldn't be in Longman's vocabulary. ~ Natalya Vorobyova

People, like us
we feel... too deeply
consumed, in shadow
this game of chance.
Together, surviving
we unending dreamers.
People... like us. ~ Bev Flynn

In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process. ~ Matthea Harvey

One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand ~ Novalis

The city is tricky. The highs are so much higher, but in the lows you drop straight down again to bedrock. It helps that streets are snapped to a grid. There are also psychic boutiques and sidewalk prophets, but until you contrive your own love story set in that city, even one as warped as mine, you remain outside it, looking for signals in the white smoke that rises from under, in the sudden hot laundry smells and the LED typos of street vendors donuteasily becomes dount, ominously like don't, to my mind. There was a DOUNT sign on Second Avenue which more than once redirected my superstitious footsteps. ~ Olivia Sudjic

Why is abbreviation such a long word? ~ Teresa Monachino

Scully was appallingly gregarious - so outgoing she was practically incoming. ~ Karen Joy Fowler

I'm just like any other person you can meet and greet on the street and like or not like. I'm not Holden or Humbert. You can really touch me! If you don't believe me, come to Aristod right now. Come hold and hump me! ~ Brian Celio

Nothing risque, nothing gained. ~ Alexander Woollcott

Prices of semicolons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty points off the TomJones Index. ~ Jasper Fforde

Committee - a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours. ~ Milton Berle

You know how there are words that never really - they are never really quite right. You can't quite trust them. Use them. You know. Without pause.'

'There are words I stare at,' Zach says. 'Strange. Every time. Misled, that's one. I see mizzled. And unshed. I read unched.'

'Me too! But that's a different thing - except, now you mention it, it's odd about unshed, that it's only for tears. Mostly. Hardly ever blood, for instance, you don't see unshed blood. Unched. Not really.'

'Not in my case anyway. Mine sheds all over the joint! I'm a bleeder all right. ~ Emma Richler

Easily found, easily gathered, lives were the small change of this world, and if you lost a few, it didn't matter; there were always more. ~ Salman Rushdie

Brevity is the soul of lingerie. ~ Dorothy Parker

Part of my wisdom consists of being a whiz at reminding the dumb, why they should be whizzes, and not just live life to whiz by others. ~ Justin K. McFarlane Beau

Justice has to be cold. Deal with it; it's just ice. ~ Natalya Vorobyova

She pursued his lips,' Zach laughs. 'Another one I misread! Pursued for "pursed." You know. She pursed her lips. So whenever you do that now, reach out and touch my lips to shut me up? I think, she pursued his lips.'

'That's so silly,' smiles Rachel.

'I know that. Now I'm pursuing your lips,' he adds.

When Zach kisses her, Rachel is often aware of the pulse in his lower labial, a small heartbeat there. She is aware of a pulsing and a slight thickening of tissue. How many times has this boy bled from his mouth? How many times. ~ Emma Richler

This is not a sweet skein of thought. Unthread it, Rachel. ~ Emma Richler

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Oh, I'm dying,' I like moaned. 'Oh, I have a ghastly pain in my side. Appendicitis, it is. Ooooooh.' 'Appendy shitehouse,' grumbled this veck. ~ Anthony Burgess

Everyone lives in two worlds," Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studied her letters. "There's the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that aren't. Mostly the real world s-s-s-suh-sucks. But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head. An inscape, a world of thought. In a world made of thought - in an inscape - every idea is a fact. Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history. Creative people, like writers, and Henry Rollins, spend a lot of their time hanging out in their thoughtworld. S-s-strong creatives, though, can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together. Your bike. My tiles. Those are our knives. ~ Joe Hill

(Media question to Beatles during first U.S. tour 1964)
"How do you find America?"
"Turn left at Greenland. ~ Ringo Starr

When they can hear each other over the wind and the music, they speak Connecticut: I will not Stamford this type of behavior. What's Groton into you? What did Danbury his Hartford? New Haven can wait. Darien't no place I'd rather I'd rather be. ~ David Levithan

Assassins: they got sass and live on sin. ~ Natalya Vorobyova

You already made your point," I say with a mouthful of fruit.
"Did I?"
"Oh, for the love of dick, yes. Now leave me alone."
"Never. If you want, I'll fuck you now."
The gall. I wouldn't fuck him now if my clit was on fire and needed to be doused with nub-saving cum. I roll my eyes at him.
"No thanks, we have a lifetime of fucking ahead of us," I say mockingly.
He shrugs and starts to walk away as if it makes no difference to him one way or the other. He's such a jackass sometimes. Before I can stop myself I throw my half-eaten banana at him and it hits him on the back of his neck.
He spins around, wipes his neck and looks down at the banana on the floor.
"Did you really just fruitally assault me?"
He thinks he's so damned funny with his wordplay. ~ Ella Dominguez

I am not a slow writer, I am not a fast writer ... I am a half-fast writer. ~ Robert Asprin

He's a bit of a dick," I said, flailing for something.
Paul rolled his eyes. "Well it's a good thing you're a bottom, because you're an asshole, so the two of you fit together just fine."
"Wow," I said. "That was a thing of beauty."
Paul looked rather pleased with himself. "Thank you. Wordplay is just like foreplay. You have to just ease into it a little - "
"Yeah, you're losing me now. ~ T.J. Klune

It was not that he was feckless, more that he had simply not been around the day they handed out feck. ~ Neil Gaiman

Tao is obscured when men understand only one pair of opposites, or concentrate only on a partial aspect of being. Then clear expression also becomes muddled by mere wordplay, affirming this one aspect and denying all the rest. The pivot of Tao passes through the center where all affirmations and denials converge. He who grasps the pivot is at the still-point from which all movements and oppositions can be seen in their right relationship ... Abandoning all thought of imposing a limit or taking sides, he rests in direct intuition. ~ Zhuangzi

You know what they say about big hitters ... the woods are full of them. ~ Jimmy Demaret

Beware the ideas of March... just one little letter changes the whole meaning. I love the way worms can do that. ~ Alan Dapre

Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only "frail." They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. ~ Mark Twain

Argentina. The word itself had lost little of its power to startle and had, due to my ignorance of the physical place it occupied on the globe, assumed a peculiar life of its own. There was the harsh Ar at the beginning, which called up gold, idols, lost cities in the jungle, which in turn led to the hushed and sinister chamber of Gen, with the bright, interrogative Tina at the end - all nonsense, of course, but then it seemed in some muddled way that name itself, one of the few concrete facts available to me, might itself be a cryptogram or clue. ~ Donna Tartt

The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish. ~ Sara Sheridan

I can be really silly when I'm not actually writing silliness, and I have to rein that in. Pynchon, in my opinion, sometimes tells elaborate shaggy dog stories just to work up to a pun or punch line. My challenge is to use humor and wordplay to reinforce the emotional core of the novel. ~ Mary Kay Zuravleff

When you find yourself writing, reading, or listening the delivery of words when spoken? You know the melody of wordplay. "& I love Wordplay ~ Elijah Cainaan

It pleases him how Spell is how the word is made but also, in the hands of the magician, how the world is changed. One letter separates Word from World, and that letter is like the number one, or an 'I', or a shaft of light between almost closed curtains. There is an old letter called a thorn, which jags and tears at the throat as it's uttered. Later he learns that Grammar and Glamour share the same deeper root, which is further magic, and there can be neither magic without that root, nor plant. He's lost in it like Chid in Child, or God reversed into Dog. Somewhere inside him is a colon. A sentence can last for life. ~ Charles Lambert

Quite a lot is a large amount but quite a few is also a large amount. ~ Teresa Monachino

How are you going to make it move? It doesn't have a – "

"Be very quiet," advised the duke, "for it goes without saying."

And, sure enough, as soon as they were all quite still, it began to move quickly through the streets, and in a very short time they arrived at the royal palace. ~ Norton Juster

Thanks liver... you are a champ! ~ Siddhant R. Shinde

Look after the senses and the sounds will look after themselves ~ Lewis Carroll

One of my favourite things about country music is that, at least until recently, you could always count on a solid story, a punchline and a pun. I think it has that in common with hip hop, where they're not afraid of wordplay and I really appreciate that. ~ St. Vincent

Don't look at me in that tone of voice. ~ Dorothy Parker

Perhaps you'd care for a synonym bun, suggested the duke. ~ Norton Juster

In the 1998 Oscars, I found myself in the bathroom in a stall, next to Tom Selleck. So I leaned over and I said 'looks like we're a couple of peeing Toms. His angry silence is something I'll never forget. ~ Tom Hanks

It is immensely rewarding to work carefully with Shakespeare's language so that the words, the sentences, the wordplay, and the implied stage action all become clear - as readers for the past four centuries have discovered. It may be more pleasurable to attend a good performance of a play - though not everyone has thought so. But the joy of being able to stage one of Shakespeare's plays in one's imagination, to return to passages that continue to yield further meanings (or further questions) the more one reads them - these are pleasures that, for many, rival (or at least augment) those of the performed text, and certainly make it worth considerable effort to "break the code" of Elizabethan poetic drama and let free the remarkable language that makes up a Shakespeare text. ~ William Shakespeare

I was drawn to love songs, but I was just drawn to great music - no matter if it's hip-hop, pop, R&B or whether it's rock n' roll or country. It could be a Garth Brooks song, and if it's a smash, then I'll love the different wordplay and different melodies. That's what I'm a fan of - great music. ~ Nayvadius Cash

I dunno." She sat on the bench and hugged the robe like a pillow. "I still think that Brett guy is cute."
"Good luck getting him away from Bekka." Cleo gathered her silky black hair into a high pony and pink-dabbed Smith's Rosebud Salve on her lips. "She's got more grip than Crazy Glue."
"More cling than Saran Wrap," Lala added.
"More hold than Final Net." Cleo giggled.
"More possession than The Exorcist," Lala managed.
"More clench than butt cheeks," Blue chimed in.
"More competition than American Idol," Frankie stuck out her chest and showed them her diva booty roll.
The girls burst out laughing.
"Nice!" Blue lifted her purple gloved hand.
Frankie slapped it without a single spark.
"I hate to be a downer..." Claudine shuffled back into the conversation wearing her slippers and robe. "But that girl will destroy you if she catches you with Brett."
"I'm not worried," Frankie tossed her hair back. "I've seen all the teen movies, and the nice girl gets the boy in the end. ~ Lisi Harrison

Martin had a period of relishing the Boston thug-writer George V. Higgins, author of The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Higgins's characters had an infectious way of saying 'inna' and 'onna,' so Martin would say, for example, 'I think this lunch should be onna Hitch' or 'I heard he wasn't that useful inna sack.' Simple pleasures you may say, but linguistic sinew is acquired in this fashion and he would not dump a trope until he had chewed all the flesh and pulp of it and was left only with pith and pips. Thus there arrived a day when Park Lane played host to a fancy new American hotel with the no less fancy name of 'The Inn on The Park' and he suggested a high-priced cocktail there for no better reason than that he could instruct the cab driver to 'park inna Inn onna Park.' This near-palindrome (as I now think of it) gave us much innocent pleasure. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Having something worth telling and a passion to tell it are what make you a good writer. I can't tell you how many times I've read novels or articles that used complicated words and witty wordplay to cover up the fact that they had absolutely no story to tell. A good story should be enjoyed; sometimes simplicity can go a long way. ~ Chris Colfer

A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B. ~ Fats Domino

It occurred to the man that the biggest problem with this staid world was the overwhelming demand for conformity. Everything was so eerily definitive: assent to the mandates of society would see you on the rise, but dissent was a steady downward path. ~ Django Wylie

He finds himself bored by the shenanigans of highly spirited young men. Their concerns reside somewhere between balder and dash. ~ Sara Sheridan

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. ~ Oscar Wilde

Unpublished.




What if I, revealed these feelings
private pieces, cast… at stranger's eyes
exposing sober thought, and truth
as sentiments, lie deep
interred, inside of me… should they come alive?

Unconsciously
to never share, that essence... safe, in mind

Restlessness wordplay, stills me
I was born… unsettled

Through my rage, of self-indulgence
all… those chosen things, I hide
deep and unexposed
stay inconsolable… within the inside ~ Bev Flynn

The reality is that dying isn't bad, but it takes forever. And that forever is no time at all. I know that sounds like a contradiction, or maybe just wordplay. What it really is, it turns out, is a matter of perspective.
- David Foster Wallace "Good Old Neon" (2004) ~ David Foster Wallace

There are four on whose pots the Holy One, blessed he, knocked, only to find them filled with piss, and these are they: Adam, Cain, the wicked Balaam, and Hezekiah.
Again, an abrupt transposition from the divine to the domestic, from upper to lowly spheres, occurs in the midrash. The homely image of the Holy One knocking on pots apparently derives from the practice of tapping on a clay or earthen pot to hear its ring in order to decide if it is worthy of holding wine. In current Hebrew usage, the expression 'to assess or gauge someone's pot' still denotes taking in the measure of a person's character. From Adam's answer to God, we learn that he turned out to be a pisspot. ~ Shuli Barzilai

Wake up to think of words ... want to walk through pages of meanings, the links in assonance, alliteration, or just simple sense that moves the eye to leap that way to the next-door play of sound and resonance. ~ Initially NO

I hear there are now Knightsbridge clinics offering semicolonic irrigation – but for many it may be too late. ~ Lynne Truss

The English probably do that wordplay kind of humour and whimsy better than anyone, and I've always felt that my writing goes more to that than what I did when I came to Australia. ~ Graeme Base

Our cadaverous cadre has been walking for little over a day ... ~ Isaac Marion

The oppressed grows weightless: doze/n th/rough c/and/or man/aged leg/ions stud/ents ~ A.R. Ammons

If only Uncle Monty knew what we know," Violet said, "and Stephano knew that he knew what we know. But Uncle Monty doesn't know what we know, and Stephano knows that he doesn't know what we know."
"I know," Klause said.
"I know you know," Violet said ~ Lemony Snicket

I ain't no hipster, but girl I can make your hips stir. ~ Mac Miller

The Bibbidi Bobbidi Beautiful boutique, the name filled me with dread. ~ Jessica Fortunato

I put the bra in brand, and I top it! ~ Natalya Vorobyova

And there are two types of stories. One type is one's own story. The other type is telling the stories of others. Thanks to this genre, writers of nonfiction can now use the tools of the reporter, the points of view and ear for dialog of a novelist, and the passion and wordplay of the poet. ~ Lee Gutkind

I have some things that I've been workin' on, such as delivery, wordplay, breath control, just a lot of other things that artists work on, that the listener may not be listening for. ~ Joe Budden

War?' The word held too much definition for three letters. ~ Shannon A. Thompson

There was no Lo to behold. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Love flies out the door when money comes innuendo. ~ Groucho Marx

Morris had been raised a Mennonite stoic in a tribe that wasn't a tribe at all, but more a failed cult whose main sources of entertainment were music, wordplay, and suffering. ~ David Bergen

The thing about elves is they've got no... begins with m," Granny snapped her fingers irritably.

"Manners?"

"Hah! Right, but no"

"Muscle? Mucus? Mystery?"

"No. No. No. Means like... seein' the other person's point of view."

Verence tried to see the world from a Granny Weatherwax perspective and suspicion dawned. "Empathy?"

"Right. None at all. ~ Terry Pratchett

Tell him I was too fucking busy-- or vice versa. ~ Dorothy Parker

Writing about sex is a challenge for the same reason sex is a challenge. Because it's complicated. Because it doesn't always make sense and it isn't always perfect and it's sometimes awful and it's sometimes hilarious. But underneath all the clever wordplay, it's about hope. Hope that someone will see us, and accept us, and perhaps - after all that - choose us. It's the barest we will ever be. The barest a character will ever be. That's why it's difficult.
As for what makes a good sex scene, a romance novelist would have told you that when done well and with a skilled hand, the best sex scenes can at once arouse and empower. Sex on the page gives readers the freedom to explore their own sexuality, their own pleasures, their own identities. With hope. And without judgment. ~ Sarah MacLean

I loved Monty Python for the wordplay
this sense that you didn't have to squash your intelligence to be funny. In fact, you could walk right into your intelligence and nerdiness and self-doubt, and that could be funny. ~ George Saunders

If a UFO did land, and invite me onboard, I'd love to have the balls to go in. So, I search the skies for extra testicles. ~ Kelli Jae Baeli

The place suggested a convent with the modern improvements - an asylum in which privacy, though unbroken, might be not quite identical with privation, and meditation, though monotonous, might be of a cheerful cast. ~ Henry James

I probably spent more time listening to albums than writing songs. But I think that gave me all the tricks in terms of wordplay, from how I pronounced my words to the actual delivery. ~ Kendrick Lamar

And there's wordplay and there's rhythms and you have to be able to get the poetry out of it. You have to be able to sell my jokes. And if you're talking about somebody like Sam Jackson, they do that. Sam Jackson can do that. Sam Jackson can turn it into the spoken word that it was always meant to be and he can sell my jokes. And Christopher Walken can do it and a lot of people can do it, all right. ~ Quentin Tarantino

Dammit, woman, you read my mind," he said. "Is there no filthy wordplay you can't foresee?"
"It's my special magical power. I can read your mind when you're thinking dirty thoughts."
"So, ninety-five percent of the time."
She craned her head back to look up at him.
"Ninety-five percent? What's the other five percent?"
"Oh, you know, the usual demons I might kill, runes I need to learn, people who've annoyed me recently, people who've annoyed me not so recently, ducks. ~ Cassandra Clare

I love astute observations and really great wordplay. I love the way that Louis C.K. observes life, and I love the way Patton Oswalt talks about it. ~ Greg Behrendt

Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five. ~ Benjamin Franklin

In his book, Samuelson grabs hold of Smith's wordplay and freebases meaning from it until a mere metaphor mutates into the economic doctrine that would define the shape and form of global finance for the remainder of the century, and beyond. ~ Anonymous

When I pass the bar, you'll be barred from bars but put behind them. ~ Natalya Vorobyova

Two wrongs never make a right. So I took the easy way out. I left. ~ EverSkeptic