Tag: language, literature

Italo Calvino

I think that my first impulse arises from a hypersensitivity or allergy. It seems to me that language is always used in a random, approximate, careless manner, and this distresses me unbearably. Please don’t think that my reaction is the result of intolerance towards my neighbor: the worst discomfort of all comes from hearing myself speak. That’s why I try to talk as little as possible. If I prefer writing, it is because I can revise each sentence until I reach the point where – if not exactly satisfied with my words – I am able at least to eliminate those reasons for dissatisfaction that I can put a finger on. Literature – and I mean the literature that matches up to those requirements – is the promised land in which language becomes what it really ought to be.

Rebecca Solnit

In the wildlife sanctuaries of literature, we study the species of speech, the flight patterns of individual words, the herd behavior of words together, and we learn what language does and why it matters. this is excellent training for going out into the world and looking at all the unhallowed speech of political statements and news headlines and CDC instructions and seeing how it makes the word or in this case, makes a mess of it. It is the truest, highest purpose of language to make things clear and help us see; when words are used to do the opposite you know you’re in trouble and maybe that there’s a cover-up.

Italo Calvino

I think that my first impulse arises from a hypersensitivity or allergy. It seems to me that language is always used in a random, approximate, careless manner, and this distresses me unbearably. Please don’t think that my reaction is the result of intolerance towards my neighbor: the worst discomfort of all comes from hearing myself speak. That’s why I try to talk as little as possible. If I prefer writing, it is because I can revise each sentence until I reach the point where – if not exactly satisfied with my words – I am able at least to eliminate those reasons for dissatisfaction that I can put a finger on. Literature – and I mean the literature that matches up to those requirements – is the promised land in which language becomes what it really ought to be.

Rebecca Solnit

In the wildlife sanctuaries of literature, we study the species of speech, the flight patterns of individual words, the herd behavior of words together, and we learn what language does and why it matters. this is excellent training for going out into the world and looking at all the unhallowed speech of political statements and news headlines and CDC instructions and seeing how it makes the word or in this case, makes a mess of it. It is the truest, highest purpose of language to make things clear and help us see; when words are used to do the opposite you know you’re in trouble and maybe that there’s a cover-up.