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According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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Roy Blount, Jr.
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 4
Musician
Writer
Indianapolis
Indiana
Word
Linguistics
Scholars
Arbitrary
Scholar
According
Relation
Meaning
More quotes by Roy Blount, Jr.
Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.
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Obama's got a great sense of humor, but mainly he has a great thinking presence, which is uncommon. It's hard to imagine being able to do, think over answers and deliver them on television. If I were president I would constantly be spluttering.
Roy Blount, Jr.
English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.
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If a cat spoke, it would say things like, 'Hey, I don't see the problem here.'
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The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South.
Roy Blount, Jr.
Being president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me.
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I am open to the accusation that I see compost as an end it itself. But we do grow some real red damn tomatoes such as you can't get in the stores. And potatoes, beans, lettuce, collards, onions, squash, cauliflower, eggplant, carrots, peppers. Dirt in you own backyard, producing things you eat. Makes you wonder.
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I just think lots of words have physicality. How about the word 'wobble?' You think that's arbitrary? When you say the word 'wince,' you wince. How about that?
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I heard on public radio recently, there's a thing called Weed Dating. Singles get together in a garden and weed and then they take turns, they keep matching up with other people. Two people will weed down one row and switch over with two other people. It's in Vermont. I don't think I'd be very good at Weed Dating.
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Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor.
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Certainly people have said a lot of deeply unfortunate and stupid things in Southern accents, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the accent itself.
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To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don't remember what I was like before I learned my ABC's, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.
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Obama's the most thoughtful-sounding president I can remember. He seems to be saying what he wants to say, and that is a great relief. He always sounds like he's thinking about what he's saying while he's saying it, and that's a rare thing in politicians.
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People don't necessarily want or need to be done unto as you would have them do unto you. They want to be done unto as they want to be done unto.
Roy Blount, Jr.
A picture's worth a thousand words? A library card's worth millions.
Roy Blount, Jr.
A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.
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Vincent van Gogh's mother painted all of his best things. The famous mailed decapitated ear was a figment of the public relations firm engaged by Van Gogh's dealer.
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Ham's substantial, ham is fat. Ham is firm and sound. Ham's what God was getting at When He made pigs so round.
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Lots of people have expressed consternation that I haven't gotten rid of Southern accent, but I just never saw any reason to lose the flavor that I grew up with. I enjoy saying some things with a Southern accent.
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Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky.
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