"When speech is divorced from speaker and word from meaning, what is left is just ritual, language as ritual."

--

Ellen Goodman

#Speech Quotes #Language Quotes #Ritual Quotes

“It often seems that the poet's derisive comment is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher: â€œWith his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches the gaps in the structure of the universe.”
“The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.”
“Evil requires the sanction of the victim.”
“I write because I must. It's not a choice or a pastime, it's an unyielding calling and my passion.”
“Machines have about as much warmth as a cube of ice.Â And that is why the horse is still part of our lives and will live on.Â He was here millions of years before man came upon the earth, and if the cycle is completed, he may still be thundering across the world long after man has vanished.”
“When you are five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties, you know how old you are. I'm twenty-three you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties, something strange starts to happen. It is a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm--you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you are not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.”
“Just think, if I had understood my lawyer and if he and I had communicated properly in January 1958, this whole history would have been entirely different .”
“The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.”

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