A Quote by Ron Jeffries
When we use a language, we should commit ourselves to knowing it, being able to read it, and writing it idiomatically.
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Also, they don't understand - writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language.
I feel like in the reading I did when I was growing up, and also in the way that people talk and tell stories here in the South, they use a lot of figurative language. The stories that I heard when I was growing up, and the stories that I read, taught me to use the kind of language that I do. It's hard for me to work against that when I am writing.
After I quit being a lawyer in '95, I was having a lot of trouble writing. Then I read somewhere that Willa Cather read a chapter of the Bible every day before she started work. I thought, 'Okay, I'll try it.' Before each writing session, I started to read the Bible like a writer, thinking about language, character, and themes.
The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.
Part of being out there, campaigning, talking to people, is being able to read body language.
The principal lesson of Emacs is that a language for extensions should not be a mere "extension language". It should be a real programming language, designed for writing and maintaining substantial programs. Because people will want to do that!
I should be able to pick which applications I use for managing my life, I should be able to pick which content I look at, and I should be able to pick which device I use, which company I use for supplying my internet, and I'd like those to be independent choices.
I don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.
I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems by Maya Angelou, or I'll just read some Mary Oliver - this is a book that was given to me for Christmas. No particular genre. And I read in French, and I read in German, and I read in English. I love to see how other people use language.
Part of knowing ourselves is also being able to accept who we are and to value ourselves regardless of our flaws. Accepting who we are allows us to value our worth without conditions or reservations.
I do understand what it is to not want to commit to someone, knowing that might bring pain or commit to a life that has to do with being responsible to people other than myself. These things, I think, are normal things.
Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.
If you're writing about angry people, you use the language of anger. If you're writing about desperate people, you use the language of desperation.
Not being able to read and write music is not the same as being illiterate in speech and writing.
Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.
For being able to use language was a critical skill that could carry one far. One could use it professionally, as a crafter of everything from political speeches to modern novels. One could use it personally, as a tool of discovery or a means of staying connected to others. One could use it as an outlet that would feed the artistic spirit of the creator, which existed in everyone.
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