Jesse Ball Quotes

Something's that written out is okay, but it's not always a clear indication of what a person means.

you can make mean anything.

I don't really believe anything I say. Because the nature of my work concerns the spaces between the words, rather than the words themselves.

Deciding what is being talked about is a kind of interpretive bet.

Hey can mean anything. It can mean yes, it can mean maybe, it could mean no, it could mean next week. Hey, the bottom line is you have to understand me to understand hey.

All records are riddles, and whatever you may want people to think it's about, it may just be throwing them off. And you don't want it to get in the way of what someone else's understanding is. It's not really about anything. At the same time, it will find some meaning.

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they have been in.

Language is a tool adequate to provide any degree of precision relevant to a particular situation.

Metaphor matters because it creates expectations.

Facts do not speak.

I love language, and I love the failure of language.

I think it's important for people to always understand what is the context is in what is being said, because that obviously determines what folks are talking about.

Words are slippery and thoughts are vicious.

It all depends what you mean by.

And those moments that I find mind busting. Meaning like there's a word that I find in a weird place. I love the process of going to the writer and working that out, because that's just basic communication.

Who knew three dots could make such a difference? Like everything else, a love or a wish or whatever, it was all in the way you read it.

Take it in what sense thou wilt.

I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.

In a world of more brilliance words don't mean anything.

The meaning of what is said is according to the motive for saying it: because things are not subject to speech, but speech to things. Therefore we should take account of the motive of the lawgiver, rather than of his very words.

What we take anything to be profoundly affects how we go about describing it, and how we describe something profoundly affects how we go about explaining, accounting for, or understanding what is what we are, in a sense, defining, by our description.

Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.

The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

Don't get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to an end. It's an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself

So much gets lost in the translation. Even if you sat there listening to it with a microscope, there's no way you're gonna find out what it means.