Idealogical Becoming of a Human Being

The ideological becoming of a human being . . . is the process of selectively

assimilating the words of others.

(Bakhtin 1981c: 341)

Many Coherent Selves

Since many stories can be told, even of the same event, then we each have many

possible coherent selves.

(Davies and Harre´ 1999: 49)

Master of Man

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man

Heidegger

Art is real

Art is real. I make it real by putting it into words

Narrative accounts

There's a good case for arguing that any narrative account is a form of fiction. The moment you start to arrange the world in words, you alter its nature. The words themselves begin to suggest patterns and connections that seemed at the time to be absent from the events the words describe.

English Language

The English language is not a square with definite sides containing its area; it is a circle, but a circle such as Euclid never contemplated, having its centre a point which hath many parts, and nowhere bounded by any line called a circumference. It is a spot of colour on a damp surface, which shades away imperceptibly into the surrounding colourlessness; it is an illuminated area in a midnight landscape, whose beams practically end somewhere, though no eye hath beheld the vanishing line.

-James Murray

Evolution of language

To enchain syllables and to lash the wind are equally undertakings of pride

-Samuel Johnson

Language of film

Film speaks in neologisms. When a language does not already exist, one must be something of an artist to speak it, however poorly. For to speak it is partly to invent it, whereas to speak the language of everyday is simply to use it"
Mertz

Resistance to theory

The resistance to theory is the resistance to the use of language about language.

"Ibid.

Second soul

To have a second language is to have a second soul

Charlemagne

Meaning of "is" is

"It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
- William Jefferson Clinton 

Beneficiary and Victim

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

- Aldous Huxley

Preventing Communication

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

- Abraham Maslow

Euphemisms

Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

- Quentin Crisp

Foreign Language

‎"Life is a foreign language; all humans mispronounce it." Christopher Morley

Fossil Poetry

"Language is fossil poetry"

-Emerson

Every Form of Expression

"In a sense, every form of expression is imposed upon one by social factors, one's own language above all.

 Edward Sapir

Invisible

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible" 
— Vladimir Nabokov

Rhythm of a lost word

"The rhythm of a lost word may be there without a sound to clothe it…. Everyone must know the tantalizing effect of the blank rhythm of some forgotten verse, restlessly dancing in one's mind, striving to be filled out with words" (William James). 

Depth of thought

"There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sight and sound. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought" (Hurston). 

Art

Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know
-Sapir