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"Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning: the meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination."
Author Name
Personal Development
"But language is wine upon his lips."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Many terms which have now dropped out of favour will be revived and those that are at present respectable will drop out if useage so choose with whom resides the decision and the judgment and the code of speech."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A cliche is everything you've ever heard of."
Author Name
Personal Development
"When someone uses the phrase 'the prick one', and you know immediately that this is a synonym for the word 'metaphorically', you are entitled to wonder whether you know the speaker too well. You are even entitled to wonder whether you should know her at all."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Words like eyeglasses blur everything that they do not make clear."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage."
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Personal Development
"All words are pegs to hang ideas on."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Cheeses crusty, got all musty, got damp on the stone of a peach, I agreed. He looked blank, so I repeated it with proper emphasis. " ChEEZ-zes crusty. Got Al -musty. Got DAMp on the StoneofapeaCH."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Because words have deep meaning, Tweets have power."
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Personal Development
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"The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition."
Language
"Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other."
Poetry
"I started to send my work to journals when I was 26, which was just a question of when I got the courage up. They were mostly journals I had been reading for the previous six or seven years."
Reading
"The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me."
Language
"I'm addicted to email, but other than that, there are practical things - being able to buy a book on the internet that you can't find in your local bookshop. This could be a lifeline if you live further from the sources."
Being
"Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel."
Poems
"The woman poet must be either a sexless, reclusive eccentric, with nothing to say specifically to women, or a brilliant, tragic, tortured suicide."
Woman
"There is a way in which all writing is connected. In a second language, for example, a workshop can liberate the students' use of the vocabulary they're acquiring."
Education
"The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn't exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity."
Creativity
"Good writing gives energy, whatever it is about."
Energy
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