Just One Word Quotes

“If eskimos can come up with fifty words for snow because its a matter of life and death, why do we have just one word for love?”

— Mike Gayle

“Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to.”

— William Gaddis

“All stories come to an end. That moment when we sigh and close the book, perhaps sit back in our chair and rest our palm over the cover, is met with quixotic emotions. On the one hand, we're satisfied if the author successfully tied up loose ends, turned a memorable phrase and rewarded the hero's moral choice with his heart's desire. Yet we're also saddened that the adventure is over. Sometimes when we see that we only have a few pages left we slow down, savoring each word, staving off the”

— Mary Alice Monroe

“I'll let you in on a little classified intel. See these people? Hardly know any of them. I mean, they go to my school, so technically I do, but we never hang out or anything. But the secret to LA is, if you throw a party - especially one of Jenna's parties - all you need to do is put out the word. If you build it, they will come, I say pointing to the crowded room.”

— Rachel Harris

“For the images of the gods are much easier to misuse for human purposes than the gods themselves. Images have no will and no desires. Statues stand for nothing but the goals of the rulers. ... The word of a god is, in truth, only the word of the one who erected his statue.”

— Kai Meyer

“Anyway, what do women grab when they're nervous and sitting at their desks? Do they slip their hands inside their panties? What a distracting thought. Just the word panty is distracting. I love that word; it implies so much. I love how women look in panties, how they're flat in the front. I'm thirty-five, but sometimes it's still this beautiful amazing shock to me that women don't have penises. They just have this lovely little mound of hair and then this tucked away glorious hole. Hole. Wait. Hole sounds vulgar. Is passageway better? Pretty envelope? Georgia O'Keeffe flower? Pussy? Pussy is good. I like the word pussy. Tucked away beautiful pussy. I wish I could put my face in one right now and sing out, I love you!”

— Jonathan Ames

“He broke away from my mouth and trailed his lips down the front of my throat. I felt his lips close around my scars. He kissed away their ugliness. His lips parted in tingling butterfly kisses that drained the strength from my knees. I realized he was mouthing words against my skin.
Not words. Just one word.
Mine.”

— Rose Christo

“The tinkle of wind chimes announcing the return of our fairy guests made us both look up. Our chance to be alone was going to be shorter than either of us had hoped.
I sighed and brushed an errant dragon scale from Eadric's tunic. "Someday when we have lots of time, remind me to tell you what you mean to me."
Eadric tilted my head back so he could gaze into my eyes. "I can tell you what you mean to me with just one word."
Let me guess," I said, smiling up at him. "Maybe I make you happy because you no longer have to enter kissing contests to find the best kisser? Do I bring excitement into your life because I can wisk you away to exotic lands on my magic carpet? Or do you find me delightful because I can conjure food whenever you're hungry?"
No, that's not ... Wait, what was that last one?"
I laughed and shook my head. "Never mind. So tell me in one word, what do I mean to you?"
That's easy," said Eadric. "Everything!”

— E.D. Baker

“Every word that is spoken and sung here (the Cabaret Voltaire) represents at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.”

— Hugo Ball

“Just one word, infused with naked desperation; half prayer, half enchantment. It felt like a freezing charm on her soul making her his prisoner, yet setting her free all at once.”

— Genevieve Dewey

“In a field. With the moon.
And the dark. And the dirt.
With your mouth. And just one word:
god god god.”

— Daphne Gottlieb

“All of the life-changing awesome
words and pictures and ideas
inside your library are useless
without just one word outside
your library: Open.”

— Mo Willems

“Friendship is genuine when two friends can enjoy each others company without speaking a word to one another.”

— George Ebers

“Human, we treat them as we treat others, take for granted services to which they did not pretend. But we force telephones to corrupt intimacy while they pretend to preserve it by keeping alive only its dangerous immediate symptoms. Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to. There, now we are apart!”

— William Gaddis

“There's one antidote for haters: show them how golden HEARTS should be.
"Hearts" is a word that happens to be an anagram of haters.”

— Angelica Hopes

“Stay out of this, Green!" He was still wholly focused on Chubs. "What else did you tell her?
What else did she get out of you?"
I jerked back, one single word throwing me off balance.
"What did you just call her?" Chubs interrupted. Of course he had caught it, too.
"What? I'm not allowed to use her name now?" he demanded. The look on his face was ripe
with derision. "What do you want me to call you? What clever codename did the League think up for
you? Pumpkin? Tiger? Tangerine?"
"You called me Green," I said.
"No I didn't," he said. "Why the hell would I call you that? I know what you are."
"You did," Chubs insisted. "You called her Green. You really don't remember?”

— Alexandra Bracken

“It's time, little one," he coaxes from above me.
I take a deep breath as I crawl to where he instructs me. My heart is racing and I feel like tears could be close again. But I am resolved. I am going to do this. I know my own wilful obstinacy will see me into the stocks and from there it really is up to Shaw. He positions me in front of the stocks and waits a few seconds, letting me absorb their magnitude, before speaking.
"Kneel."
Just one word but it seals my fate. I comply immediately, wordlessly, allowing my terror to turn into the first shoots of arousal. This is really happening ...”

— Felicity Brandon

“If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss ...”

— Rudyard Kipling

“I stood in the middle of the room flipping and Pusher was plucking at the guitar, just one string, and I went up to him and said, 'Man don't pluck those dirty notes at ME,' and like he just got up without a word and left. [Mardou]”

— Jack Kerouac

“You are loved and cherished. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong. If I had to boil this entire message down to one sentence, it would run this way: You are loved. And if I had to boil it down further, to just one word, it would (of course) be, simply: Love.”

— Eben Alexander

“Each one of us had been starved for love for so long that we wanted to believe that love, once found, was all-powerful. We wanted to believe that it could give word to my inchoate pain and rages; that it could enable Muriel to face the world and get a job; that it could free our writings, cure racism, end homophobia and adolescent acne.”

— Audre Lorde

“I don't know whether Asimov realized he was saying this as well, but as an old historical materialist, if only as an afterthought, he must have realized that he was saying too: No one here will ever look at you, read a word you write, or consider you in any situation, no matter whether the roof is falling in or the money is pouring in, without saying to him- or herself (whether in an attempt to count it or to discount it), 'Negro ... ' The racial situation, permeable as it might sometimes seem (and it is, yes, highly permeable), is nevertheless your total surround. Don't you ever forget it ... ! And I never have.”

— Samuel R. Delany

“But no one ever said yes to make sex consensual. You took hints from body language, from the way two people came together. Why ... didn't a shake of the head or a hand pushing hard against a chest speak just as loudly? Why did you have to actually say the word no for it to be rape?”

— Jodi Picoult

“A one-hundred-thousand-word novel might take a year or several years, and then you just come to 'The End' one day. But it takes hundreds of days to get to 'The End.' As a writer, you have to put in those hundreds of days.”

— Bob Mayer

“In fact, I argue that the future of advertising, whatever the technology, will be to associate each brand with one word. This is one word equity. It's the modern equivalent of having the best site on the high street, except the location is in the mind.”

— Maurice Saatchi

“A co-op woman, old, tired, Jewish, fake drops of jade spread across the little sacks of her bosom, looked up at the pending wind and said one word: "Blustery." Just one word, a word meaning no more than "a period of time characterized by strong winds," but it caught me unaware, it reminded me of how language was once used, its precision and simplicity, its capacity for recall. Not cold, not chilly, blustery ...
"It is blustery, ma'am," I said to the old co-op woman. "I can feel it in my bones." And she smiled at me with whatever facial muscles she still had in reserve. We were communicating with words.”

— Gary Shteyngart

“Carroting, you must understand, was a process by which animal fur is bathed in a solution of mercury nitrate, in order to render the hairs more supple, thus producing a superior felt." At this last word, he threw a significant glance in my direction. "Felt," I repeated. "You mean, for the making of hats?" "Precisely. The solution is of an orange colour, hence the term carroting. However, this process had rather severe side effects on those who worked with it, which is why its use today is much reduced. When mercury vapours are inhaled over a long enough period of time-particularly, for our purposes, in the close quarters of a hat-making operation-toxic and irreversible effects almost inevitably follow. One develops tremors of the hands; blackened teeth; slurred speech. In severe cases, dementia or outright insanity can occur. Hence the term mad as a hatter.”

— Douglas Preston

“Philippians 4:13 has never rung so true ... You were an unparalleled Giant in all sense of the word, Dad. So keep doin' you up there, because no one does it better, and no one ever will.”

— Cassidy Gifford

“It's good to have a title that's not just one word. If you're gonna title it, you might as well try and say something.”

— Damien Hirst

“There are few people who define the word, 'rock star' better than U2's Bono. He's revered the world over not just for leading one of the biggest bands ever, but for his very public work on behalf of the underprivileged in Africa.”

— Daryn Kagan

“Each of us, in our own personal Factory, may believe we have stumbled down one corridor, and that our fate is sealed and certain (dream or nightmare, humdrum or bizarre, good or bad), but a word, a glance, a slip - anything can change that, alter it entirely, and our marble hall becomes a gutter, or our rat-maze a golden path. Our
destination is the same in the end, but our journey - part chosen, part determined- is
different for us all, and changes even as we live and grow. I thought one door had snicked shut behind me years ago; in fact I was still crawling about the face. Now the door closes, and my journey begins.”

— Iain Banks

“Were passing by. Once I heard him making fun of Jules. Jules was walking down the street carrying a lamp in his hand that he'd obviously just pulled out of some garbage heap. "Look at the garbage picker man!" Alphonse said. "That motherfucker is sad. He tried to sell me a comforter once! I said get the hell away from me. He's out all night looking for rags and bones. What year we living in, man? Get a real job, motherfucker." Jules couldn't stand Alphonse either. He said Alphonse was a pimp. I didn't know what a pimp did exactly. I was almost certain that it meant he had prostitutes working for him, but I wasn't sure. I told a kid at school that I knew a pimp and he said, "Bullshit. It's not fucking possible. You're making it up." So I guessed I'd made a mistake. Or maybe the word "pimp" had two different meanings. I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING to make older guys want to treat me like I was one of them,”

— Heather O'Neill

“Val: Why do you go out there?
Sandra: Because dead people give such good advice.
Val: What advice do they give?
Sandra: Just one word- live!”

— Tennessee Williams

“The one thing an audience always has in common with a comedian is troubles. The Yiddish word for that is tsuris. You're always putting your tsuris on stage whether you like it or not. No one is untroubled, unless they're just, you know, an imbecile.”

— David Steinberg

“Millions and Millions, he whispered to himself: and the enormity of the evil seemed to grow with every repetition of the word. All over the world, millions of men and women lying in pain; millions dying, at this very moment; millions more grieving over them, their faces distorted, like that poor old hag's,the tears running down their cheeks. Ad millions starving, millions frightened, and sick and anxious. Millions being cursed and kicked and beaten by other brutal millions. And everywhere the stink of garbage and drink and unwashed bodies, everywhere the blight of stupidity and ugliness. The horror was always there, even when one happened to be feeling well and happy
always there, just around the corner and behind almost every door.”

— Aldous Huxley

“One day they would decide to shoot him. You could not tell when it would happen, but a few seconds beforehand it should be possible to guess. It was always from behind, walking down a corridor. Ten seconds would be enough. In that time the world inside him could turn over. And then suddenly, without a word uttered, without a check in his step, without the changing of a line in his face-suddenly the camouflage would be down and bang! would go the batteries of his hatred. Hatred would fill him like an enormous roaring flame. And almost in the same instant bang! would go the bullet, too late, or too early. They would have blown his brain to pieces before they could reclaim it. The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach for ever. They would have blown a hole in their own perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom.”

— George Orwell

“There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where poetry and song are distinguished. But poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music.”

— Edward Hirsch

“Anne, are you killed?' shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees beside her friend. 'Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one word to me and tell me if you're killed.”

— L.M. Montgomery

“You didn't happen to see your future mother-in-law at that meeting today, did you?" May as well milk the effort. "Yes, the hormonal carp was present." "Marshall!" "She blew me a new one, as you would say.""She ripped you a new one," I correct. "The word blow has an entirely different meaning. I suggest you remove it from your lexicon.”

— Addison Webster Moore

“Paul Slazinger says, incidentally, that the human condition can be summed up in just one word, and this is the word: Embarrassment.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“To All That Work So Hard To Enrich Lives And Help Make A Better Humanity,
I Have Just One Word To You ... NAMASTE!”

— Timothy Pina

“I just want to say one word to you-just one word ... "plastics!" ... There's a great future in plastics.”

— Buck Henry

“I played [baseball] in college, so it wasn't that much a stretch. But I would say the main thing for guys who hadn't played before it's just one word - swagger. If you have swagger on the field, and look like you know how to play, that's 90% of it.”

— Tyler Hoechlin

“A little smile, a word of cheer, A bit of love from someone near, A little gift from one held dear, Best wishes for the coming year. These make a merry christmas!”

— John Greenleaf Whittier

“I believe that you can change a life with just one word.”

— Onew

“I can say, through the power of the Spirit that wherever God can get a people that will come together in one accord and one mind in the Word of God, the baptism of the Holy Ghost will fall upon them, like as at Cornelius' house.”

— William J. Seymour

“If one were to ask ... "What is slavery?" and I should answer in one word, "murder," my meaning would be understood at once. Why, then, to this other question: "What is property?" may I not likewise answer, "theft" ... ?”

— Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

“Spread compassion all around you. Look around you - people are so unhappy, don't add to their unhappiness. Your compassion will lessen their unhappiness; just one word of compassion will lessen their unhappiness. Don't add to their unhappiness.”

— Rajneesh

“If there is one word that describes our form of society in America, it may be the word-voluntary.”

— Lyndon B. Johnson

“Writers ever since writing began have had problems, and the main problem narrows down to just one word - life.”

— William Styron