Too many people are too angry about language too much of the time. This time could be better spent listening, learning, and enjoying the vast variety of human language around them.

Thousands of miles from Georgia, beginning that night in England, my dad became a foreign-language speaker to me – and I was utterly charmed by it. I found the foreigner in myself.

Arguments about language are usually arguments about politics, disguised and channeled through one of our most distinctive markers of identity.

There is really only one way to learn good writing: good reading and extensive writing and revising.

Yesterday's abomination is today's rule.

If you look at the historical record, you will find that language has always been in decline. Which means, really, and it never has.

I'd start to explain with the outward sheepish and inner pride of the nerd.

His captivating speech came not from his grammar or vocabulary but from the joy he took in wielding them well.

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.

Avoid making important or long-term decisions when you are fatigued mentally, emotionally or physically.

In the land of the skunk the man with half a nose is king!

In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.

There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform

Did I help you to a fate you didn't want?

What is luck? It is not only chance, it is also creating the opportunity, recognizing it when it is there, and taking it when it comes.

We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home.

Our life is a gift from God. What we do with that life is our gift to God.

I think the most important recipe for a good date is just spending time with somebody and really connecting and feeling like the best version of yourself regardless of what you may be doing.