The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and...

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.

Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.