What is your favorite quote about words? Why?
Like the author who apologized for writing long because he didn’t have time to make it short, I’ll apologize for choosing more than one quote for the Day 3 challenge because I just couldn’t weed out either of these.
1- We are masters of unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
Winston Churchill
I like this quote, because I also believe the old saying that “least said, soonest mended.” Too many words can create tangles, hard feelings, excessive self-revelation (we really don’t need to tell the world what we had for breakfast– unless it’s amazing, of course). Too many words often bore others, interfere with a coherent thought process, and dissipate good ideas before they’re born. And quietness is a good thing.
2- The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing is a process of discovery for both writer and reader. I often begin writing with just a glimmer of an idea, but as I follow it, it unrolls just before me, and as it unfolds, I discover things I didn’t know I knew. Words are a magic carpet.
