Words Quotes

1. "A handwritten letter carries a lot of risk. It's a one-sided conversation that reveals the truth of the writer. Furthermore, the writer is not there to see the reaction of the person he writes to, so there's a great unknown to the process that requires a leap of faith. The writer has to choose the right words to express his sentences, and then, once he has sealed the envelope, he has to place those thoughts in the hands of someone else, trusting that the feelings will be delivered, and that the recipient will understand the writer's intent. How childish to think that could be easy."
Author: Adriana Trigiani

2. "Food is symbolic of love when words are inadequate."
Author: Alan D. Wolfelt

3. "'Tell Suzie she's a lucky cat.' Have sexier words ever been spoken?"
Author: Ally Carter

4. "I make books because I love them as objects; because I want to put the pictures and the words together, because I want to tell a story."
Author: Audrey Niffenegger

5. "I fell in love the moment I saw her in her grandfather's kitchen, her dark curls crashing over her Portuguese shoulders. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she smiled.'I'm really not that thirsty.''What? What you say?' Her English wasn't too good. Now I'm seventy-three and she's just turned seventy. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she asked me today, smiling. 'I'm really not that thirsty.''What? What you say?' Neither of us has the gift of language acquisition. After fifty years of marriage we have never really spoken, but we love each other more than words can say."
Author: Dan Rhodes

6. "Did you catch the time-of-great-suffering thing?"Her expression softened. "Can you just make sure I'm not around when it happens?""No can do," I said, strolling back to my office with a negating wave of my hand. "If I have to suffer, then so does everyone else within a ten-mile radius."She pursed her lips. "What ever happened to taking one for the team?""Was never much of a team player.""Sacrificing yourself for the greater good?""Not that into human sacrifice.""Suffering in silence?"I stopped and turned back to her, my eyes narrowing accusingly. "If I have to suffer, I'll be screaming your name at the top of my lungs the whole time. You'll be able to hear me all the way to Jersey, mark my words."- Charley to Cookie"
Author: Darynda Jones

7. "Being there doesn't mean I'm present. I exist only in words. I want to be transmuted fully to white page and ink."
Author: David Joseph Cribbin

8. "What was there to say? It was a matter of silences, not words."
Author: Don DeLillo

9. "It never bored them to hear words, words; they breathed them with the cool night air."
Author: E.M. Forster

10. "You little fool. Tears are not a woman's only weapon. You've got another one between your legs, and you'd best learn to use it. You'll find men use their swords freely enough. Both kinds of swords."
Author: George R.R. Martin

11. "Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words."
Author: Grant Morrison

12. "It was clear to the one speaking that each of his words was being allowed to enter into his listener, who sat there quietly, openly, waiting' not a single word was disregarded or met with impatience; Vasudeva attached neither praise nor blame to what he heard but merely listened."
Author: Hermann Hesse

13. "I resent you—" Robespierre said. His words were lost. "The People," he shouted, "are everywhere good, and if they obstruct the Revolution—even, for example, at Toulon—we must blame their leaders.""What are you going on about this for?" Danton asked him. Fabre launched himself from the wall. "He is trying to enunciate a doctrine," he shrieked. "He thinks the time has come for a bloody sermon." "If only," Robespierre yelled, "there were more vertu.""More what?""Vertu. Love of one's country. Self-sacrifice. Civic spirit.""One appreciates your sense of humor, of course." Danton jerked his thumb in the direction of the noise. "The only vertu those bastards understand is the kind I demonstrate every night to my wife."
Author: Hilary Mantel

14. "Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,' Polo said."
Author: Italo Calvino

15. "At length the Lady Galadriel released them from her eyes, and she smiled. ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled,' she said. ‘Tonight you shall sleep in peace.' Then they sighed and felt suddenly weary, as those who have been questioned long and deeply, though no words had been spoken openly."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

16. "Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize 'The stars are words' and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it's all in my mind."
Author: Jack Kerouac

17. "In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie."
Author: Jeanette Winterson

18. "On those nights, the words were for me alone. They came up unbidden from my heart. They spilled over my tongue and spilled out my mouth. And because of them, I, who was nothing and nobody, was a prince of Denmark, a maid of Verona, a queen of Egypt. I was a sour misanthrope, a beetling hypocrite, a conjurer's daughter, a mad and murderous king."
Author: Jennifer Donnelly

19. "Small fruit is better than big words."
Author: Jerry L. Lewis

20. "You think I'm with you out of guilt?""No, you ass. Of course not. I just mean—""You're a nut, MacAllister. I'm with you because I love you."There it was, out. Three little words. Three of the most common words in the world, but string them together and they were more powerful than any warrant, any extradition papers, or even treaty. Stronger than any magical spell. Had he really never said them aloud to Taylor?"
Author: Josh Lanyon

21. "However, embarrassment was quickly replaced with a completely different emotion all together when I heard him say the words that I knew I was never going to forget, "I'm going to marry that girl one day." And in that moment... I knew that I was falling in love."
Author: Karli Perrin

22. "Disquite SonnetI wish that I could find the words to tellYou were it hurts; nothing breaking my skinSlices whispering in my brain like hellLeaking suggestions of a morose grinCannot collect my thoughts long enough toShare them in an understandable waySo I lock my lips firmly and walk throughLife, searching for the perfect words to sayTrapped in my head, I seek to be let outGrasping connections with those who might knowWhat it feels like, alone in a crowd, doubtFilling my body with reasons to goFace to face, I might not find the right phraseBut I hope someone hears me anyway"
Author: Kathy Trithardt

23. "Even Pushkin, who could understand everything, did not grasp the real significance of Dead Souls. He thought that the author was grieving for Russia, ignorant, savage, and outdistanced by the other nations. But it is not only in Russia that Gogol discovers "dead souls." All men, great and small, seem to him lunatics, lifeless, automata which obediently and mechanically carry out commandments imposed on them from without. They eat, they drink, they sin, they multiply; with stammering tongue they pronounce meaningless words. No trace of free will, no sparkle of understanding, not the slightest wish to awake from their thousand-year sleep."
Author: Lev Shestov

24. "I love the words, because they love me too."
Author: M.F. Moonzajer

25. "It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for."
Author: Marilynne Robinson

26. "I think you often say more by saying less. And interestingly enough, I mean, Jesus really set the standard. I mean, he could say more with fewer words than anybody. Most of the parables were less than 250 words. And, boy, did he have some one-liners just packed with truth."
Author: Mark Batterson

27. "She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.They breathed.German and Jewish lungs."
Author: Markus Zusak

28. "Yes, the Führer decided that he would rule the world with words. "I will never fire a gun," he devised. "I will not have to." Still, he was not rash. Let's allow him at least that much. He was not a stupid man at all. His first plan of attack was to plant the words in as many areas of his homeland as possible."
Author: Markus Zusak

29. "See, Cameron. The only things I care about in this life are me, you, Mum, Dad, Steve and Sarah. And maybe Miffy. The rest of the world means nothing to me. The rest of the world can rot.'Am I like that too?'You? No way.' There's a slight gap in his words. 'And that's your problem. You care about everything.'He's right.I do."
Author: Markus Zusak

30. "Writing is.... being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment."
Author: Mary Gaitskill

31. "We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story."
Author: Mary McCarthy

32. "When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy."
Author: Matsuo Bashō

33. "Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."
Author: Michael Palin

34. "Here, in this painting, in these (hopefully) creative meditations, you will see teh same sky and the same sun, the same story of struggle, of fall and grace, of descent and ascent, of death and resurrection. The same God. The same gifts. If He's not tired of it, why should I be? If His brush is still in His hand, if His words still roll, what can I do but stick my tongue out the cornder of my mouth and diligently (but pitifully) rip Him off? What can I do but meditate on His meditations? (xii)"
Author: N.D. Wilson

35. "Ars PoeticaI taught my words to love,I showed them my heartand would not give up until their syllablesdid not start to beat.I showed them treesand what words wouldn't rustleI hanged, without pity, from the branches.In the end, wordsneeded to resemble both meand the world.ThenI came to me,I braced myself between two banksof a river,to present a bridge,a bridge between a bull's horn and grass,between black stars of light and earth,between the temple of a woman's head and a man's,letting words travel over melike racing cars, electric trains,only so they could cross faster,only so they would learn to transport the world,from itself,to itself."
Author: Nichita Stănescu

36. "He matters to me, too.""I know he does.""He didn't." Phillip pulled out his hammer to nail the laps. "Not as much as he did to you. Not enough. It's different now.""I know that, too." For the next few minutes they worked in tandem, without words. "You stood up for him anyway," Cam added when the plank was in place. "Even when he didn't matter enough.""I did it for Dad.""We all did it for Dad. Now we're doing it for Seth."
Author: Nora Roberts

37. "...when the words pour out of you just right, you understand that these sentences are all part of a river flowing out of your own distant, hidden ranges, and all words become the dissolving snow that feeds your mountain streams forever. The language locks itself in the icy slopes of our own high passes, and it is up to us, the writers, to melt the glaciers within us. When these glaciers break off, we get to call them novels, the changelings of our burning spirits, our life's work."
Author: Pat Conroy

38. "Words won't have meaning until you put your emotions into them."
Author: Pratik Akkawar

39. "Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, — solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude."
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

40. "No one in that city understands, Gil, because it doesn't matter to them anymore. They've never learned to fear the steel and the men who carry it, and none of them ever will, because they don't have to. Because in this place I've seen, men like that don't exist anymore. We don't exist anymore.Sounds like a beautiful fucking place. How do I get there? Ringil grinned fiercely up at the Kiriath clan captain. Oh wait — you're going to tell me the rents are sky-high, right? And how am I going to earn a living if they keep their swords in a museum?"
Author: Richard K. Morgan

41. "Two powerful, little words I've learned to use when facing challenges, fears, and doubts—so what?"
Author: Richelle E. Goodrich

42. "...Obduracy can be overcome by determination. More insidious, and far harder to destroy, was women's internalizing of the notion that they were somehow inferior to men, a complementary species designed (in W.R. Greg's words) to 'complet[e], sweeten, and embellish the existence of others'. [Women] still chose to become nurses rather than doctors, secretaries rather than bosses: to be ill-paid facilitators for people no more talented nor, in many cases, better educated than themselves, but who simply happened to be men. The notion that they might be their bosses' equals penetrated only very slowly; the possibility that they might even be their superiors, though accepted in theory, has perhaps still not wholly sunk in."
Author: Ruth Brandon

43. "And what have I invested in interpreting disfocus for chaos? This threat: the only lesson is to wait. I crouch in the smoggy terminus. The streets lose edges, the rims of thought flake. What have I set myself to fix in this dirty notebook that is not mine? Does the revelation that, though it cannot be done with words, it might be accomplished in some lingual gap, give me the right, in injury, walking with a woman and her dog in pain? Rather the long doubts: that this labor tears up the mind's moorings; that, though life may be important in the scheme, awareness is an imperfect tool with which to face it. To reflect is to fight away the sheets of silver, the carbonated distractions, the feeling that, somehow, a thumb is pressed on the right eye. This exhaustion melts what binds, releases what flows."
Author: Samuel R. Delany

44. "It felt so weird, to be on the other side, where you were the one expected to offer condolences, not receive them. I wanted my "sorry" to sound genuine, because it was. That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted to say."
Author: Sarah Dessen

45. "And what are your interests and hobbies, Nicholas?" Annabel asked faintly, sounding like a cross between a television interviewer and a hostage. Nick considered this for a minute, and then said "I like swords." Annabel leaned over her plate and asked, her voice changing "You fence?" "Not exactly," Nick drawled. "I'm more freestyle."
Author: Sarah Rees Brennan

46. "People never explain to you exactly what they think and feel and how their thoughts and feelings work, do they? They don't have time. Or the right words. But that's what books do. It's as though your daily life is a film in the cinema. It can be fun, looking at those pictures. But if you want to know what lies behind the flat screen you have to read a book. That explains it all."
Author: Sebastian Faulks

47. "There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all."
Author: Sophie Swetchine

48. "In those few words you've summed up my life - my reason for existence. It's you. Any pain I've suffered, the mistakes I've made, the path laid out for me have all led here - to you."
Author: Tima Maria Lacoba

49. "If you do writing, people will store your gigawords."
Author: Toba Beta

50. "Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,And breath of life, I have no life to breathWhat thou hast said to me."
Author: William Shakespeare

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