إن إحدى مآسي الإنسان الكبرى هي أنّه لا يملك عُنقًا طويلًا مثل عنق البعير ، يسمح له بمراقبة الكلمات وتنظيفها قبل أن تخرج من فمه لأنّ بعضها أكثر خطورة من الرصاص

To say exactly what one means, even to one's own private satisfaction, is difficult. To say exactly what one means and to involve another person is harder still. Communication between you and me relies on assumptions, associations, commonalities and a kind of agreed shorthand, which no-one could precisely define but which everyone would admit exists. That is one reason why it is an effort to have a proper conversation in a foreign language. Even if I am quite fluent, even if I understand the dictionary definitions of words and phrases, I cannot rely on a shorthand with the other party, whose habit of mind is subtly different from my own. Nevertheless, all of us know of times when we have not been able to communicate in words a deep emotion and yet we know we have been understood. This can happen in the most foreign of foreign parts and it can happen in our own homes. It would seem that for most of us, most of the time, communication depends on more than words.

What really matters is:—1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them.3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean "More people died" don't say "Mortality rose."4. In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers "Please will you do my job for me."5. Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Kipster is a perfectly valid word,” Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. “Okay, so what does it mean?” Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just changed the subject with school gossip. Mandy found herself just ignoring it… it always sounded the same, the same events, same rumors, same secrets, same affairs, but never anything of interest to her.“Well Sarah’s on drugs again and that’s why she did it in Mario’s backseat, but now she might be pregnant, oh, and that messed-up Seth kid’s been cutting himself again so he was sent away to Halifax last week, and there’s a festival in Wolfville but Kathy won’t go because Audrey-Rose is going to be there and they hate each other, and….”Mandy had learned two years ago to detach herself from gossip; she’d learned it from Jud’s death. Wendy may have been eighteen years old but she could be immature on the best of days.

Elodin pointed down the street. "What color is that boy's shirt?""Blue.""What do you mean by blue? Describe it."I struggled for a moment, failed. "So blue is a name?""It is a word. Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man's will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself."My head was swimming by this point. "I still don't understand."He laid a hand on my shoulder. "Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating." He lifted his hands high above his head as if stretching for the sky. "But there are other ways to understanding!" he shouted, laughing like a child. He threw both arms to the cloudless arch of sky above us, still laughing. "Look!" he shouted tilting his head back. "Blue! Blue! Blue!

Jacopo, while I could still read, during these past months, I read dictionaries, I studied histories of words, to understand what was happening in my body. I studied like a rabbi. Have you ever reflected that the linguistic term `metathesis' is similar to the oncological term `metastasis'? What is the metathesis? Instead of `clasp' one says `claps.' Instead of `beloved' one says `bevoled.' It's the temurah. The dictionary says that metathesis means the transposition or interchange, while metastasis indicates the change and shifting. How stupid dictionaries are! The root is the same. Either it's the verb metatithemi or the verb methistemi. Metatithemi means I interpose, I shift, I transfer, I substitute, I abrogate a law, I change a meaning. And methistemi? It's the same thing: I move, I transform, I transpose, I switch cliches, I take leave of my senses. And as we sought secret meanings beyond the letter, we all took leave of our senses. And so did my cells, obediently, dutifully. That's why I'm dying, Jacopo, and you know it.

Unless followed by the world 'education', liberal has now lost this meaning [seeking knowledge or doing something for its own sake -- i.e. 'freely' with no exterior motive]. For that loss, so damanging to the whole of our cultural outlook, we must thank those who made it the name, first of a political, and then a religious, party. The same irresponsible rapacity, the desire to appropriate a word for its 'selling-power', has often done linguistic mischief. It is not easy now to say at all in English what the word conservative would have said if it had not been 'cornered' by politicians. Evangelical, intellectual, rationalist, and temperance have been destroyed in the same way. Sometimes the arrogation is so outrageous that it fails; the Quakers have not killed the word friends. And sometimes so many different people grab at the coveted word for so many different groups or factions that, while it is spoiled for its original purpose, none of the grabbers achieve secure possession. Humanist is an example; it will probably end by being a term of eulogy as vague as gentleman.

KELİMELERKelimelere dikkat et,Özellikle mucizevi olanlara.Mucizevi olanlar için en iyisini yaparız, Bazen böcek sürüsü gibi toplanırlarSokmazlar ama bir öpücük bırakırlar.Parmaklar kadar iyi olabilirler.Oturduğun kaya kadar güvenilir...Aynı zamanda hem papatyalar hem de yaralar gibi...Sözcüklere aşığım, evet.Tavandan sarkan kuğular onlar,Kucağımda duran altı kutsal portakal,Ağaçlar onlar, yazın bacakları, Ve güneş, onun tutkulu yüzü. Genellikle yanılttılar beni.Söylemek istediğim çok şey vardı,Çok fazla hikaye, görüntü, atasözü ve saire...Ama kelimeler yeterince iyi değil.Yanlış olanları öptü beni. Bazen bir kartal gibi uçarımAma bir çalıkuşunun kanatlarıyla. Yine de dikkat etmeye çalışırımVe onlara nazik davranmaya. Kelimeler ve yumurtalar dikkatle taşınmalıdır.Bir kere kırıldılar mı, tamiri imkansızdır.

I don’t know: perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs (I don’t know, that’s all words), never wake (all words, there’s nothing else).You must go on, that’s all I know.They’re going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They’re going to abandon me. It will be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts? It will be I?You must go on.I can’t go on.You must go on.I’ll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it’s done already. Perhaps they have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.)It will be I? It will be the silence, where I am? I don’t know, I’ll never know: in the silence you don’t know.You must go on.I can’t go on.I’ll go on.

The savage rushing of the river seemed to be inside her head, inside her body. Even when the oarswomen, their guides, were speaking to her, she had the impression she couldn't quite hear them because of the roar. Not of the river that did indeed roar, just behind them, close to the simple shelter they'd made for her, but because of an internal roar as of the sound of a massive accumulation of words, spoken all at once, but collected over a lifetime, now trying to leave her body. As they rose to her lips, and in response to the question: Do you want to go home? she leaned over a patch of yellow grass near her elbow and threw up. All the words from decades of her life filled her throat. Words she had said or had imagined saying or had swallowed before saying to her father, dead these many years. All the words to her mother. To her husbands. Children. Lovers. The words shouted back at the television set, spreading its virus of mental confusion. Once begun, the retching went on and on. She would stop, gasping for breath, rest a minute, and be off again. Draining her body of precious fluid... Soon, exhausted, she was done. No, she had said weakly, I don't want to go home. I'll be all right now.

Words.I’m surrounded by thousands of words. Maybe millions. Cathedral. Mayonnaise. Pomegranate.Mississippi. Neapolitan. Hippopotamus.Silky. Terrifying. Iridescent.Tickle. Sneeze. Wish. Worry.Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes—each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs.From the time I was really little—maybe just a few months old—words were like sweet, liquid gifts, and I drank them like lemonade. I could almost taste them. They made my jumbled thoughts and feelings have substance. My parents have always blanketed me with conversation. They chattered and babbled. They verbalized and vocalized. My father sang to me. My mother whispered her strength into my ear.Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them.I have no idea how I untangled the complicated process of words and thought, but it happened quickly and naturally. By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings.But only in my head.I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.

I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth—all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones.

A fox will chew off its own foot before it calls for helpBut he saw glory in being a bird with broken wings And therefore he broke his own to fit into that illusion of false injusticeSomething to rebel againstA background story he saw as grandA painful childhood dreamt up by him aloneHe saw splendor in his wounds and majesty in his scarsWhich were all self-inflicted…self-proclaimedAll in attempt to be magnificent and madBut instability doesn't call itself unstableAnd a fox will chew off its own foot before it calls for helpAlas, life seemed more boundless if one had a limp A black-eyeOr scared wrists And instead of tattooing his story, he carved it in his own skinWith a rusty blade of self-pity and needA dull deep need that could never be quenched no matter how deep he cutIn a black and white world he wished for all to marvel at the red he could caress out of himselfA twisted delusion of what the world would revere atBegging with lies of pain and spasms for all to stay a little whileSee him as wicked…see him as perverse…anything but ordinaryBe in awe of his self-inflicted tragedy that was his falsehood and mistaken identityHe saw glory in being a bird with broken wings And therefore he broke his own to fit into that illusion of false injusticeHe saw splendor in his wounds and grandeur in his scarsAll in attempt to be magnificent and madBut instability doesn't call itself unstable

Drop a pebble in the water: just a splash, and it is gone;But there's half-a-hundred ripples circling on and on and on, Spreading, spreading from the center, flowing on out to the sea. And there is no way of telling where the end is going to be.Drop a pebble in the water: in a minute you forget,But there's little waves a-flowing, and there's ripples circling yet, And those little waves a-flowing to a great big wave have grown; You've disturbed a mighty river just by dropping in a stone.Drop an unkind word, or careless: in a minute it is gone;But there's half-a-hundred ripples circling on and on and on. They keep spreading, spreading, spreading from the center as they go, And there is no way to stop them, once you've started them to flow.Drop an unkind word, or careless: in a minute you forget,But there's little waves a-flowing, and there's ripples circling yet, And perhaps in some sad heart a mighty wave of tears you've stirred, And disturbed a life was happy ere you dropped that unkind word.Drop a word of cheer and kindness: just a flash and it is gone; But there's half-a-hundred ripples circling on and on and on, Bearing hope and joy and comfort on each splashing, dashing wave Till you wouldn't believe the volume of the one kind word you gave.Drop a word of cheer and kindness: in a minute you forget;But there's gladness still a-swelling, and there's joy a-circling yet, And you've rolled a wave of comfort whose sweet music can be heard Over miles and miles of water just by dropping one kind word.

I remember, for instance, the first time I went to the great palace of Versailles outside Paris and how, as I wandered around among all those gardens and fountains and statues, I had a sense that the place was alive with ghosts which I was just barely able to see, that somewhere just beneath the surface of all that was going on around me at that moment, the past was going on around me too with such reality and such poignance that I had to have somebody else to tell about it if only to reassure myself that I wasn’t losing my mind. I wanted and sorely needed to name to another human being the sights that I was seeing and the thoughts and feelings they were giving rise to. I thought that in a way I could not even surely know what I was seeing physically until I could speak of it to someone else, could not come to terms with what I was feeling as either real or unreal until I could put it into words and speak those words and hear other words in response to mine. But there was nobody to speak to, as it happened, and I can still remember the frustration of it: the sense I had of something trying to be born in me that could not be born without the midwifery of expressing it; the sense, it might not be too much to say, of my self trying to be born, of a threshold I had to cross in order to move on into the next room of who I had it in me just then to become. “in the beginning was the Word,” John writes, and perhaps part of what that means is that until there is a word, there can be no beginning. Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, in an essay called The Speaking and Writing of Words.