Everyday Language Quotes

My style is colloquial storytelling. It's the way we tell stories to one another - it's not writerly, it's not overdone.

In my day-to-day, I might speak, like, 10 sentences.

The poet is a specialist in something which everyone practises. Herein, poetry differs from the other arts. Everyone does not practise music or painting or even dancing, but everyone without exception puts together words poetically every day of his life.

Dialogue is generally the worst choice for exposition. When you're writing lines you need to focus on the way people actually talk. And when we talk to each other we never actually explain our terms. We don't say 'Sweetheart, would you pass me the sugar bowl, which we picked up for a song at that antique stall in Munich.'

People walking down the street would just say 'Ball don't lie.' I kinda feel like Bobby McFerrin, the mastermind behind 'Don't worry, be happy.'

Rock isn't art, it's the way ordinary people talk.

Loving your language means a command of its vocabulary beyond the level of the everyday.

Uncommon things must be said in common words.

The language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

My songs have some street talk in them, but that's the way I talk and the way a lot of people I know talk.

Writing is better if it's kept simple. Every sentence doesn't need to have perfect noun/verb agreement. I've said 'ain't' on the air. Because I sometimes use 'ain't' when I'm talking.

I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.

In my experience when critics raise these objections, they invariably violate one of seventeen principles for interpreting the Scriptures....For example, assuming the unexplained is unexplainable....failing to understand the context of the passage....assuming a partial report is a false report...neglecting to interpret difficult passages in light of clear ones; basing a teaching on an obscure passage; forgetting that the Bible uses nontechnical, everyday language; failing to remember the Bible uses different literary devices.

We can't avoid that our daily and intimate manner of speaking is sometimes rough.

Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.

Let us create extraordinary words, on condition that they be put to the most ordinary use and that the entity they designate be made to exist in the same way as the most common object.

Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.

Lots of people speak Afrikaans. It's not a statement; it's just a language that we use to communicate. It has its own flavour; it's got its own slang. People laugh. People like it. They like us being open.

I figure I'm just one of many people. I'm not that different from anybody else, and I don't have great language, highfalutin' language - I'm very ordinary. So I figure if I write about myself, other people with similar feelings and experiences would go, 'Oh, that's me.'

I don't like theatrical actors and actresses. I like people that talk like real human beings.

Yeah, well, the F-bomb - it's become as ubiquitous as the word 'like.' People just throw the word 'like' around as punctuation. And I think in a lot of everyday speech, the F-bomb has become a kind of dash or a comma.

I'm trying to tell the story in the most clear, concise, and truthful way, taking those everyday words and phrases and capturing them in a way that they become something else.

I don't feel like I have to use big words or theories to get my point across. People are like, "Whoa. That's crazy" and make it into this crazy thing.

I like to write in fairly everyday language - I've always tried to write lyrics that, if people would speak the words, it wouldn't sound like a song.