“Linguists say that language comes after music
and we sang nonsense syllables

before we invented a rational speech
to order our days.”

~ Jim Harrison

"What we’ve been doing for thousands of years is just trying to piece by piece get some understanding of where we came from, where the universe came from, and where it’s all going. So, to me, that is not distinct from what the poet does or what the philosopher does or what the great writer does or the composer does. They just do it in a different language."

~ Brian Greene

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

~ David Whyte

"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from."

"If a community of speakers is using a word and knows what it means, it's real. That word might be slangy, that word might be informal, that word might be a word that you think is illogical or unnecessary, but that word that we're using, that word is real."

~ Anne Curzan

Sooner or later, I thought, 
the wind would begin to make sense 
if I listened hard 
and took notes religiously.

~ Don Thompson

"People have a wrong kind of idea of how discoveries happen in science. They think you kind of calculate your way towards the discovery. It never works that way."

~  Arthur Zajonc