Quotes about Language

The primary practice of language is not in giving out information but being in relationship.

The Scriptures, read and prayed, are our primary and normative access to God as He reveals Himself to us. The Scriptures are our listening post for learning the language of the soul, the ways God speaks to us; they also provide the vocabulary and grammar that are appropriate for us as we in our turn speak to God.

Prayer is a way of language practiced in the presence of God in which we become more than ourselves while remaining ourselves.

You're talking nonsense, and noisy nonsense at that.

God uses language to create and command us.

The practice of prayer, if it is going to amount to anything more than wish lists and complaints, requires a recovery of personal, relational, revelational language in both our listening and our speaking.

Words kill, words give life; they're either poison or fruit-you choose.

There is nothing quite as destructive to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the use of language that dismisses the way Jesus talks and prays and takes up instead the rhetoric of smiling salesmanship or vicious invective.

Writing to explore and discover what I didn't know. Writing as a way of entering into language and letting language enter me, words connecting with words and creating what had previously been inarticulate or unnoticed or hidden. Writing as a way of paying attention. Writing as an act of prayer.

Teaching resurrects dead words so they live again.

We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and they end up using us.

It's your heart, not the dictionary, that gives meaning to your words.