English Language Quotes - Page 12

• Regret; The saddest word in the English language.

  Tonya Hurley

  Regret, Language, Saddest

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• Why should a novelist not also be a historian? To force unnatural divisions within the English language is to work against its capacious and accommodating nature. To expect a writer to produce only novels, or only histories, is equivalent to demanding from a composer that he or she write only string quartets or piano sonatas.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Writing, Piano, Novelists

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• I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Expression, Able, Common

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays”, p.98, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Assange is not a 'journalist' any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine 'Inspire' is a 'journalist.' He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.

  Sarah Palin

  Blood, Hands, Editors

  "Assange: WikiLeaks 'fearlessly publishing facts'". www.cnn.com. December 08, 2010.

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• Gunn would be an important figure-rewarding, delightful, accomplished, enduring-in the history of English-language poetry even were his life not as fascinating as it now seems; he would be an important figure in the history of gay writing and in the history of transatlantic literary relations even were his poetry not so good as it is. With his life as it was and his works as they are, he's an obvious candidate for a volume of retrospective and critical essays, and this one is first-rate.

  Stephen Burt

  Writing, Gay, Important

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• With the requests of some he complied, and has published a discourse, delivered before the Society for recovering drowned persons, which may be justly pronounced one of the most beautiful and interesting sermons in the English language.

  John Strachan

  Beautiful, Interesting, May

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• Myspace alone has just over 80 million users and ranks as the sixth most popular English language website and the eighth most popular site in the world.

  Mike Fitzpatrick

  Halloween, World, Language

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• I think that phrase is the most horrible phrase in the English language - 'I don't know.' It's terribly embarrassing.

  Jim Morrison

  Thinking, Phrases, Language

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• Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there's the dead ghost of Gaelic in the language we use and listen to and that those things will reflect our Irish identity.

  John McGahern

  Rain, Sky, Identity

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• Words fail me sometimes. I have read most every word in the Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language, but I still have trouble making them come when I want them to. Right now I want a word that describes the feeling you get – a cold sick feeling deep down inside – when you know something is happening that will change you, and you don’t want it to, but you can’t stop it. And you know you will never be the same again.

  Jennifer Donnelly

  Sick, Feelings, Want

  Jennifer Donnelly (2015). “A Gathering Light”, p.5, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language.

  Daniel Day-Lewis

  Country, Parent, Custodians

  "In the name of the father". Interview with Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. February 28, 2003.

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• There may be no more-radioactive term in the English language than what we now almost always refer to as the 'n-word' - itself a coy means of linguistic sidestepping that is a sign of how perilous it is to utter the thing in full, even in conversations about language.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Mean, May, Language

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• Second-generation Hispanics marry non-Hispanics at a higher rate than second-generation Irish or Italians. Second-generation Hispanics' English language capability rates are higher than previous immigrant groups'.

  Jeb Bush

  Groups, Generations, Language

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• The four most important words in the English language are, "What do you think?" Listen to your people and learn.

  J. W. "Bill" Marriott, Jr.

  Thinking, People, Important

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• When I first started coaching, one of the worst things that I think I heard was 'It will be O.K.' I would wonder, 'How the hell is it going to be O.K.?' The worst word in the English language is 'hope.'

  Bobby Knight

  Thinking, Coaching, Firsts

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• Christopher Hitchens is the greatest living essayist in the English language.

  Christopher Buckley

  Language, Essayists

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• I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

  Gordon Getty

  Paris, Piano, Bookstores

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• Any noun can be verbed.

  Alan Perlis

  Learning, Nouns, Programming

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• The Economist is undoubtedly the smartest weekly newsmagazine in the English language. I always look forward to its quirky year-end double issue.

  Eric Alterman

  Years, Year End, Issues

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• Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside?

  Jackson Browne

  Player, Would Be, Porsche

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• I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language - and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Love, Religious, Book

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “Generation of Swine: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

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• Let's not become so worried about not offending anybody that we lose the ability to distinguish between respect and paranoia.

  Larry King

  Offending, Language, Worried

  Larry King, Bill Gilbert (2007). “How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: The Secrets of Good Communication”, p.105, Three Rivers Press

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• But it's very technical and you really have to work and work and work to crack it. It's about using your whole face, jaw and tongue in a totally different way. It was very interesting - I love the English language, which made it easier.

  Marion Cotillard

  Interesting, Different, Cracks

  "Public Enemies - Marion Cotillard interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• I love literature, the English language and storytelling. I also have thirty horses and seventy foxhounds to feed.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Horse, Literature, Language

  Interview with Janet Justs, ejournals.lib.vt.edu. November 6, 2003.

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• There is no word in the English language for the feeling someone gets when they suddenly realize they're standing next to an unholy monster impersonating a human. Monstralization, maybe?

  David Wong

  Feelings, Monsters, Next

  David Wong (2011). “John Dies at the End”, p.515, Titan Books

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