Grace has to be the loveliest word in the English language. It embodies almost every attractive quality we hope to find in others. Grace is a gift of the humble to the humiliated. Grace acknowledges the ugliness of sin by choosing to see beyond it. G...
I hold my finger up to his lips. He flicks his eyes down to look at it. "You're absolved," I tell him. He brings his eyes back up to mine. There's no fucking way he knows what that word means. That's a word I dream someone will say to me. So I put it...
True freedom is doing what Allah wants which is the defintion of freedom in Islam. The 'Abdullah is the only real hur because he is a servant and a slave to Allah and not to creation. The one who is a slave to himself is not free and will never be fr...
Yes, of course, there's something fishy about describing people's feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. It's really a machine for making falsehoods. When we really s...
I don't think I'm modest so much as I'm realistic. I know what I can do and what I can't do. I know what I am, and more importantly, I know what I'm not. I'm not really a major innovator; I don't know if I contribute to the language of the saxophone ...
Reality is very, very contradictory, and so I try to write just perfecting what I see, what I read, what I feel, in a feel-thinking way. Not only giving ideas, or receiving ideas, or trying to explain something, but mainly feel-thinking, a feel-think...
The English language [during the Elizabethan era] wasn't standardized. There were no official dictionaries. There was no cultural belief that words should always be spelled the same way. So people spelled things however they heard them or however mad...
...I’ve never understood the logic that says a work doesn’t need to be judged on the quality of its writing or characters simply because its genre. On the other hand, I’ve also never understood the logic of excusing a work from the need to tell...
Language is a poor thing. You fill your lungs with wind and shake a little slit in your throat, and make mouths, and that shakes the air; and the air shakes a pair of little drums in my head—a very complicated arrangement, with lots of bones behind...
Music is the great unifier. It doesn’t matter which country you’re in or what language is being spoken, the fans just magically seem to get it. They share a common goal of love and celebration for the purity of magnificence and brilliance that ha...
I say to you all, once again -- in the light of Lord Voldemort's return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort's gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equal...
In his sermon on the baptism of the Spirit, Chamberlain points out Peter's focus in Acts 2. The amazing work of enabling the apostles to speak languages in which they had not been trained drew the attention of the crowd so Peter could address them. N...
How language is webbed in the senses. Out of sand-blazed brilliance into quirky minds such as his, into touch, taste and fragrance. He thought he'd linger just a bit longer, let the bath take total hold, ease and alleviate, before he put on clothes a...
And one of my firmest conclusions is that we always think by seeking and drawing parallels to things we know from our past, and that we therefore communicate best when we exploit examples, analogies, and metaphors galore, when we avoid abstract gener...
You know, I was a kid who had difficulty speaking English when I first immigrated. But in my head, when I read a book, I spoke English perfectly. No one could correct my Spanish. And I think that I retreated to books as a way, you know, to be, like, ...
You should really stay true to your own style. When I first started writing, everybody said to me, 'Your style just isn't right because you don't use the really flowery language that romances have.' My romances - compared to what's out there - are ve...
Let me just acknowlege that the function of grammar is to make language as efficent and clear and transparent as possible. But if we’re all constantly correcting each other’s grammar and being really snotty about it, then people stop talking beca...
He did recall that the summer after graduating from college before he joined the state police he had read Shakespeare. It was the pure language that stupefied him. He would be in a diner reading and his acquaintances were confident he was studying fo...
Robbie the Robot: [approaches from vehicle, stops and bows] Welcome to Altair IV, Gentlemen. Robbie the Robot: I am to transport you to the Residence. Robbie the Robot: If you do not speak English I am at your disposal with 187 other languages along ...
Walt Kowalski: [about Thao] I don't care about him. Sue Lor: You hang out with him, you teach him to fix things, you saved him from that fucked cousin of ours. Walt Kowalski: Watch your language, lady. Sue Lor: And you're a better man to him than our...
Zebulon Gant: [shouting loudly] Right, you little bastards! You will stand up straight or I will personally shit kick every far eastern buttock that appear before me eyes! Algren: Well done, sergeant. Zebulon Gant: When you understand the language, s...
