American Linguist Quotes

Learning is a deep human need, like mating and eating, and like all such needs it is meant to be deeply pleasurable to human beings.

A community is known by the language it keeps, and its words chronicle the times. Every aspect of the life of a people is reflected in the words they use to talk about themselves and the world around them. As their world changes — through invention, discovery, revolution, evolution, or personal transformation — so does their language.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

Secrets could never be rushed. They had to come of their own accord, on their own schedule. That way, when they came, the offered themselves as a gift.

Donna Jo Napoli

History
Coming too close
Is monstrous, like a doll
That is alive and bigger than the child
Who tries to hold it.

Babette Deutsch

Girls are not accustomed to jockeying for status in an obvious way; they are more concerned that they be liked.

Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday. Heart feels better, then. But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart. Heart is so new to this. I want them back, says heart. Head is all heart has. Help, head. Help heart.

If you give yourself that short little moment of thinking, then you cannot miss it.