Quotes on Words

Why do I write? I have been called a writer of catastrophes, but that isn't true. I am always looking for words of love. Hate will not save us. Only love.

The play is not in the words, it's in you!

Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune.

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.

Most honorable are services rendered to the State; even if they do not go beyond words, they are not to be despised.

There's something about the idea of writing, and thinking about writing as a form of prayer - the way as a writer you call out into the world and throw your words into the world. You're not praying to a god, but you're almost conjuring a reader to arrive. That's what books do: they're an invitation to readers.

The wonderful thing about the cartoon form is it's a combination of words and pictures. You don't have to choose, and the contribution of the two often winds up being greater than the sum of its parts.

There are moments when the body is as numinous as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

I love words because you can only live one life, but in a novel, you can live a thousand: you contain multitudes.

I am very into lyrics. I start with what the words are saying, what the storyline is saying, like a good script. It should really capture me, do something for me. If I don't get it, it's not going to move people, and if it's not going to move people, it's not going to happen.

Silence is better than unmeaning words.

However, no two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is - in other words, not a thing, but a think.

The two most frightening words in Washington are 'bipartisan consensus.' Bipartisan consensus is when my doctor and my lawyer agree with my wife that I need help.

When it comes to our collective health, how we deal with the multiple crises and problems around us also depends on the power of context - in other words, our resilience.

There are certain words which are nearer and dearer to a man than any others.

People have been told so often that resurrection is just a metaphor, and means Jesus died and was glorified - in other words, he went to Heaven, whatever that means. And they've never realized that the word 'resurrection' simply didn't mean that.

Freedom will not prevail because of historical forces; it will only win, if it does, because of historical actors. In other words, us. Those like me who came of age around 1989 used to take democracy for granted.

Accident is as much a part of fiction as anything else, symbolic of the grace that, along with will, conspires to put words on the page.

I am afraid to end up being in need to sell canvases - in other words, to be a society painter.

The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.

It's very hard to find your own words - and you don't actually exist until you have your own words.