Language Nuance Quotes

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.

It's really the tone that people use to convey things sometimes that can either become a compliment or an insult. It's not always what you are saying, it's about how you say it.

I was born into a profession in which my love of words, chosen with care for their meaning and nuance, was extremely important, not only to me, but also to the people with whom I worked with.

There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism.

If I've made myself clear, I've misspoken.

You cannot sing African music in proper English

I never worked with a dialogue coach before, but I'd hate it if an American did a British accent and didn't do it well. It would be insulting.

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back.

In Russian, ambition is a bad word. It's arrogant.

Those who write as they speak, even though they speak well, write badly.

Irish is harder to pull off. I know southern people and I really like the midwest, so I can tap into that a little bit. It's easier to sound angry with southern than it is Irish. Yelling Irish you can sound like an angry Leprechaun. I think me screaming like I am going to kill you in Irish doesn't work.

I don't write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don't have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it's bent doesn't actually register. It's the old you-gotta-paint-like-them-before-you-can-paint-like-you thing.

To be blunt, I feel like lyricism in Spanish is of a different quality than English. You can get really poetic in Spanish, but I feel like if you do that in English, you risk sounding cheesy. In Spanish, it's never that. It's always this deep, passionate, beautiful imagery; it's painted different, a different color.

I hate using the word 'dark' for things that are negative.

Write with the learned. Pronounce with the vulgar.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Writing is more than just the making of a series of comprehensible statements: it is the gathering in of connotations; the harvesting of them, like blackberries in a good season, ripe and heavy, snatched from among the thorns of logic.

It is a fine line between making fun of the right thing and making fun of the wrong thing. And the language oftentimes is the same.

I've always loved the word blunderbuss. I've always thought that it was a beautiful word and that it could mean several different things.

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

The "sayings" of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech - it is a gift from heart to heart.

It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The period tells you that that is that; if you didn't get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; read on; it will get clearer.

And of course the word love has many shades of meaning, as do many, many of the words in our living, breathing language

I can be a very sarcastic person, and sometimes people take every word I say literally.