Home > Work > The Word Exchange

The Word Exchange QUOTES

The Word Exchange QUOTES

1 " Why do you think people stopped reading? We read to connect with other minds. But why read when you're busy writing, describing the fine-grained flotsam of your own life. Compulsively recording every morsel you eat, that you're cold, or, I don't know, heartbroken by a football game. An endless stream flowing to an audience of everyone and no one. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

2 " The secretary of education recently unveiled an initiative for curriculums to place more emphasis on history and language. Within the decade, proficiency in at least three languages will be required of all American schoolchildren by graduation. And along with its other recommendations, the CDC has issued a promulgation that every U.S. citizen “unplug” for at least two hours each day.
location 6374 "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

3 " I found that reading gave me a certain relief – one form of escapism that seemed safe, and maybe more than safe. I felt saner – less fragmented- after reading for an hour.
location 3234 "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

4 " To create a word is simple. But to create a world – to think – that’s hard. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

5 " People become so obsessed with the future, they make it up. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

6 " Words, then, are born of worlds. But they also take us places we can’t go: Constantinople and Mars, Valhalla, the Planet of the Apes. Language comes from what we’ve seen, touched, loved, lost. And it uses knowable things to give us glimpses of what’s not. The Word, after all, is God. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

7 " Words don’t always work. Sometimes they come up short. Conversations can lead to conflict. There are failures of diplomacy. Some differences, for all the talk in the world, remain irreconcilable. People make empty promises, go back on their word, say things they don’t believe. But connection, with ourselves and others, is the only way we can live. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

8 " Language may have limits. But it isn’t just a dim likeness in a mirror. Yes, gestures, glances, touches, taps on walls mean something. So do silences. But sometimes the word is the thing. The bridge. Sometimes we only know what we feel once it’s been said. Words may be daughters of the earth instead of heaven. But they’re not dim. And even in the faintest shimmer, there is light. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

9 " Sometimes the best way out of darkness is into it. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

10 " Language also acts like love in form. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

11 " What if, right now, as we’re immolating language, we’re doing away with ourselves? Maybe we’ve regressed. The skills we once used for survival – scattered attention, diffuse concentration – have been adapted to finding glowing dots on screens, skimming pop-ups, beams, emails, video streams. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

12 " We both think love (and language) are interesting but taffylike diversions: soft, simple, perhaps a little salty. If either one takes over your life, you're an ass. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

13 " In truth, it was also by design: as much as I loved my mother, she wasn't often the person I sought for comfort in hard times. She disapproved tacitly of crying. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

14 " I wanted to do it once. Be a writer. Now I'm near 70, and the only thing I have to show for it is dictionary entries. Don't get me wrong -- I'm incredibly proud of it all. But let me say this, and I'll say it just once: don't fool yourself into thinking you're just on a detour as you sail home for Ithaca. A little pit stop, if you like, with the Lotus-Eaters or Calypso. There's no Athena interceding on your behalf. No guarantee you'll eventually arrive. If there's something you really want in life -- especially if it's something that scares you, or you think you don't deserve -- you have to go after it and do it now. Or in not very long you'll be right: you won't deserve it. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

15 " But maybe because I'm from a part of the country where there are more meth labs than drive-throughs, anything harder than cough syrup always makes me nervous. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

16 " In the words of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

17 " In Japanese, koi no yokan means the ineluctable feeling you have, upon meeting someone for the first time, that eventually the two of you will fall in love. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

18 " Without words, we're history's orphans. Our lives and thoughts erased. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

19 " But let me say this, and I'll say it only once: don't fool yourself into thinking you're just on a detour as you sail home for Ithaca. A little pit stop, if you like, with the Lotus-Eaters or Calypso. There's no Athena interceding on your behalf. No guarantee you'll eventually arrive. If there's something you really want in life - especially if it's something that scares you, or you think you don't deserve - you have to go after it and do it now. Or in the very long you'll be right: you won't deserve it. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

20 " It’s always the scuffs in the marble that make its inner light seem to glow more brightly. "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange