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"I was always influenced by language."
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"Hey, any idea why Australians speak something that sounds deceptively like English but isn't? I mean, I'm trying to figure out why I can't seem to converse with another human being who speaks the same language as I do."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies."
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Personal Development
"If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest."
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Personal Development
"Thou shalt not use the 140 characters limit as an excuse for bad grammar and/or incorrect spelling."
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Personal Development
"But language is wine upon his lips."
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Personal Development
"A cliche is everything you've ever heard of."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A lexicographer a writer of dictionaries a harmless drudge."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use."
Author Name
Personal Development
"All choice of words is slang. It marks a class. "There is correct English: that is not slang. "I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets."
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"Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear."
Poetry
"Poets go through a very tough apprenticeship in the use of words."
Poet
"I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram seat, with her back to me."
Family
"My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint."
Books
"As individuals, we are shaped by story from the time of birth; we are formed by what we are told by our parents, our teachers, our intimates."
Time
"If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us."
Past
"I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all."
Fact
"Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive."
Books
"Children will not pretend to be enjoying books, and they will not read books because they have been told that these books are good. They are looking for delight."
Books
"Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book."
Hope
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