Richard Lederer Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

Puns are a three-way circus of words: words clowning, words teetering on tightropes, words swinging from tent-tops, words thrusting their heads into the mouths of lions.

Richard Lederer
Paradox is a particularly powerful device to ensnare truth because it concisely illuminates the contradictions that are at the very heart of our lives. It engages our hearts and minds because, beyond its figurative employment, paradox has always been at the center of the human condition.

Richard Lederer
For me, writing is like throwing a Frisbee. You can play Frisbee catch with yourself, but it's repetitious and not much fun. Better it is to fling to others, to extend yourself across a distance.

Richard Lederer
Punctuation marks do for the reader what road signs and traffic signals do for the driver.

Richard Lederer
Like flint tools and weaving, each new word is a human invention, spoken or written for the very first time by a particular human being at a particular moment. We human beings are the word makers, and it is we who decide what words mean and when their meanings change.

Richard Lederer
Like people, words are born, grow up, get married, have children, and even die. They may be very old, like man and wife and home. They may be very young, like Sudoku and ginormous.

Richard Lederer
Words are such an integral part of our consciousness that we believe they have always existed, like stones and grass and bushes. But this is not true.

Richard Lederer
Language is a window through which we look at the world. A growing number of people have begun to wonder if our window on reality has a glass that distorts our view. If language reflects culture and in turn influences culture, could it be that the window through which we see life is marked by cracks, smudges, blind spot, and filters?

Richard Lederer
Punning is a rewording experience. The inveterate (not invertebrate) punster believes that a good pun is like a good steak — a rare medium well done.

Richard Lederer
Carnivores eat flesh and meat; piscivores eat fish; herbivores consume plants and vegetables; verbivores devour words. I am such a creature.

Richard Lederer
Asking a writer to account for the genesis of his or her ideas is as futile as asking a spider to explain the source of its web and the method of its construction.

Richard Lederer
My whole life I have feasted on words—ogled their appetizing shapes, colors, and textures; swished them around in my mouth; lingered over their many tastes; let their juices run down my chin.

Richard Lederer
It is indeed acceptable practice to sometimes split an infinitive. If infinitive-splitting makes available just the shade of meaning you desire or if avoiding the separation creates a confusing ambiguity or patent artificiality, you are entitled to happily go ahead and split!

Richard Lederer