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Language is always burdened by thought.

There are times in life when language fails us, when everything that needs to be said can be expressed only by saying nothing at all.

Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.

Human language... prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.

There are very few places in the world where you have to learn a language with no language in common. It's called a monolingual field situation.

If language did not affect behavior, it could have no meaning.

What provides you with subject matter is your own language - and that's all.

I think with all my books, language has been their subject as much as anything else. Language can elide or displace or sideline whole groups of people. You can't necessarily change the way language is used, but if it becomes something you're conscious of... that gives you a certain power over it.