When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I'm trying for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for wate it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language. Maya Angelou
About This Quote

The English is an excellent language and has lots of uses. However, it has some flaws as well. There are phrases that sound quite strange when they're translated into English. A good example is the phrase, "I want to die!" The literal translation is "I want to ku-mu-mi-sho-so (the last syllable comes out as "ku-mu-mi-shi")." After a while, however, you can hear it come out as "I want to find out if I'm going to die!" It sounds like a child or someone who doesn't know what he or she wants to say.

Some Similar Quotes
  1. This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to... - David Levithan

  2. Some moments are nice, some arenicer, some are even worthwritingabout. - Charles Bukowski

  3. Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever. - Sylvia Plath

  4. There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it. - Shannon L. Alder

  5. When you're missing a peice of yourself, aching, gut wrenching emptiness begins to take over. Until you find the link that completes your very soul, the feeling will never go away. Most people find a way to fill this void, material possessions, a string of... - Jennifer Salaiz

More Quotes By Maya Angelou
  1. I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

  2. Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed...

  3. How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.

  4. A truth should exist, it should not be usedlike this. If I love youis that a fact or a weapon?

  5. Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.

Related Topics