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"When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on."
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"It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art."
Art

"I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art."
Art

"I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art."
Art

"For these cultures, getting rid of the pain without addressing the deeper cause would be like shutting off a fire alarm while the fire's still going."
Cause

"One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism."
Philosophy

"We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life "outside" the story changes the story."
Life

"I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader."
Desire

"Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se."
Society

"We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fact that we wish they'd come back - I mean, what's wrong with us?"
Fact

"When people call it that I always get pissed off because I always think depression sounds like you just get like really sad, you get quiet and melancholy and just like sit quietly by the window sighing or just lying around. A state of not caring about anything. A kind of blue kind of peaceful state."
Mental Health
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"All our words from loose using have lost their edge."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Our language now has become quick-moving (in syllables), and may be very supple and nimble, but is rather thin in sound and in sense too often diffuse and vague. the language of our forefathers, especially in verse, was slow, not very nimble, but very sonorous, and was intensely packed and concentrated - or could be in a good poet."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Are you one of those people who uses words more for the sound than for the sense of them?"
Author Name
Personal Development

"Where do the words gowhen we have said them?"
Author Name
Personal Development

"Language is the gateway of the mind and a bridge that connects us to other human beings. Language enables a person to share their clandestine inner world with other human beings and to learn about other people's mysterious world of logical thoughts and poetic sentiments."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own words out o' a pint o' the Bible's."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Words are never insufficient to describe any situation. It is the talent to use the words which is the insufficient one!"
Author Name
Personal Development

"Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns."
Author Name
Personal Development

"And why does he talk so funny? Doesn't he mean squashed tomatoes?I don't think that they had tomatoes when he comes from, said Bod. And that's just how they talk then."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Words aren't made - they grow,' said Anne."
Author Name
Personal Development
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