As soon as we conform anything to language, we’ve changed it. Use a word and you’ve altered the world. The poets know this. It’s what they try so hard to avoid.
All words are pegs to hang ideas on.
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Henry Ward Beecher
A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.
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Anonymous
No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....
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Alexander Trocchi
Strong words outlast the paper they are written upon.
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Joseph Bruchac
A new word. Bright with possibilities. A flawless pearl to turn over and over in my hand, then put away for safekeeping.
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Jennifer Donnelly
More Quotes By Ethan Canin
As soon as we conform anything to language, we’ve changed it. Use a word and you’ve altered the world. The poets know this. It’s what they try so hard to avoid.
In people like us, the craving is as strong as the craving for food or water, the yearning for touch or light or love. I was looking for something--a diversion, an occupation, an unwavering force--that would elevate me, that would lift me out of the...
I don't want to be movie-star famous. I want to move people with my writing.
I'm a craftsman type of teacher. I don't like the thematic type of teaching that takes place in a lot of colleges.
In medical school, you're taught to write in this convoluted, Latinate way. I knew the vocabulary as well as anyone, but I would write kidney instead of nephric. I insisted on using English.
