I have always been immersed in a world filled with words, earlier as a reader and now, finally, as both a reader and a writer.
We all know that little words or phrases can mean a lot, yet so few of us know just what to say. Phrases, such as 'chin up,' or 'it could be worse,' usually have the opposite effect; they feel tired and impersonal, even dismissive.
I've always said that lovingkindness and compassion are inevitably woven throughout meditation practice even if the words are never used or implied, no matter what technique or method we are using.
Sticks and stones may break bones, but words do more damage than most people can imagine. Especially name-calling. 'You're dangerous!' 'Deceived.' 'A false prophet.' 'A compromiser!' Charges like these by young-earth leaders, both spoken and implied, are intended to discredit, maim, and crush old-earth advocates, including me.
The days when the words 'Hollywood actor' framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate, consultant, pundit, and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now, a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops.
Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won't last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don't realise that.
You want to know what judicial activism is? Judicial activism is judges imposing their policy preferences on the words of the Constitution.
Trump's hobbled vocabulary is now the incontestable stuff of comedy: not just how few his words but how narrow their range, from boastful to irked and back again. For satirists and impressionists, a president who addresses the American people in abbreviated tweetspeak is a gift.
I'll drive down the street, and I'll practice improv. I will sit there at a red light and see two guys talking to each other, and I will just start playing both characters. I can't hear them, but I can see their mouths moving, so I'll just put words in their mouths.
Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going.
Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.
When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.
In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.
If you look at the average age of a company on the Dow Jones index, it's something like 35 years or younger. In other words... success is no indication of longevity.
In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
The modern artist... is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.
And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?
The Bible is not only laws, it's also stories. It begins, 'In the beginning God created Heaven.' If I had written these words, I wouldn't have written anything else; it's just enough.
When I say, 'I can't stay long, I'm in-between meals,' that plays differently on the radio than it does in person. So I have to pick material that works because the words are funny, not just because of the images.
There is no such thing as too much swearing. Swearing is just a piece of linguistic mechanics. The words in-between are the clever ones.
