Thursday, March 25, 2010

truer words



"There ought to be a whole separate language, she thought, for words that are truer than other words--for perfect, absolute truth. It was the purest fact of her life: she did not understand him, and she never would."
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Pearl pg 10

I'm reading this book for my American Fiction class and this statement really struck me. It is such a true thing. We throw words around like they are meaningless. We hardly even pause to really think about things on most days--flippantly saying this or that to catch a response, or we blurt things out wishing we could take them back in once we see the reaction or hear their response.

Words have power, but we use them so much so often that they lose it.

I would love it if we had a different language--a completely new set of words to use when we were really serious about something. It would tell people that we really mean what we say.

Or rather, how about we start thinking more and saying less--that would be nice, because then, as a rule, what we say would be meaningful, but sadly I don't think that will happen on a grand scale, but it would be grand.

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