Alena Graedon > Quotes

“Why do you think people stopped reading? We read to connect with other minds. But why read when you're busy writing, describing the fine-grained flotsam of your own life. Compulsively recording every morsel you eat, that you're cold, or, I don't know, heartbroken by a football game. An endless stream flowing to an audience of everyone and no one.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Words, I've come to learn, are pulleys through time. Portals into other minds. Without words, what remains? Indecipherable customs. Strange rites. Blighted hearts. Without words, we're history's orphans. Our lives and thoughts erased”
― Alena Graedon

“Words, then, are born of worlds. But they also take us places we can’t go: Constantinople and Mars, Valhalla, the Planet of the Apes. Language comes from what we’ve seen, touched, loved, lost. And it uses knowable things to give us glimpses of what’s not. The Word, after all, is God.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“In Japanese, koi no yokan means the ineluctable feeling you have, upon meeting someone for the first time, that eventually the two of you will fall in love.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“If there's something you really want in life - especially if it's something that scares you, or you think you don't deserve - you have to go after it and do it now. Or in not very long you'll be right: you won't deserve it.”
― Alena Graedon

“Words are living legends, swollen with significance. We string them together to make stories, but they themselves ARE stories, encapsulating rich, runny histories.”
― Alena Graedon

“Without words, we're history's orphans. Our lives and thoughts erased.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Reflection can be its own reward.”
― Alena Graedon

“But let me say this, and I'll say it only once: don't fool yourself into thinking you're just on a detour as you sail home for Ithaca. A little pit stop, if you like, with the Lotus-Eaters or Calypso. There's no Athena interceding on your behalf. No guarantee you'll eventually arrive. If there's something you really want in life - especially if it's something that scares you, or you think you don't deserve - you have to go after it and do it now. Or in the very long you'll be right: you won't deserve it.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“I guess all I'm trying to say is that language may be large, unwieldy, and in a perpetual state of transformation - in other words, language is like love - but, unlike Dr. D, I don't think it's greater than we are. I think it's our duty, in fact, to corral it into coherence; to suppress its more unruly tendencies; to verify its meaning and, more importantly, its efficacy; to test its subjectivity-bridging potential. (Again, we should treat it very much like love.)”
― Alena Graedon

“One single word – like EMERGENCY, or love – can revise a whole night. A whole life.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Our natural tendency is to be distracted - to scan the horizon constantly for predators and prospects. Books made us turn that attention inward, to build higher and higher castles within the quiet kingdoms of our minds. Through that process of reflection and deep thinking, we evolved.”
― Alena Graedon

“Why do you think people stopped reading? We read to connect with other minds. But why read when you’re busy writing, describing the fine-grained flotsam of your own life. Compulsively recording every morsel you eat, that you’re cold, or, I don’t know, heartbroken by a football game. An endless stream flowing to an audience of everyone and no one. Who can bother with the past when it’s hard enough keeping up with the present? But we do need the past. And things that last longer than a day.…”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Language is incarnate. It’s the way our bodies evolved—to stand upright, to walk—that enables us to speak at all. And it’s our senses that give us reasons to talk. We want to verify with others what we seem to perceive. It’s also our bodies that give our words urgency: the tiny ticking clocks in each of our cells. Words, then, are born of worlds. But they also take us places we can’t go: Constantinople and Mars, Valhalla, the Planet of the Apes. Language comes from what we’ve seen, touched, loved, lost. And it uses knowable things to give us glimpses of what’s not. The Word, after all, is God. Some”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“When I made some observation about linguistic affinity and heredity and Freud—so obvious, I worried that I sounded like a philistine—Ana gave a startled, gargled laugh. Her already enormous eyes grew even wider. And I was immediately engulfed in a warm, prickly compunction.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Words compress impressions into facts cold as frozen quarters. One single word-like EMERGENCY, or love- can revise a whole night. A whole life.”
― Alena Graedon

“If I was missing out on things, they were things I didn’t think to miss.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“She disapproved tacitly of crying. Preferred “helpful advice.” But her advice wasn’t always that helpful for me. I don’t do yoga; don’t have her green thumb; don’t really like window-shopping—especially not in stores where I can’t afford even the candles they burn to make you calm enough to take your wallet out—and am unmotivated, in times of sorrow, to host dinners or attend social events. I”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Al•ice \′a-lƏs\ n : a girl transformed by reflection”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“But as Hegel teaches us, beginnings are necessarily problematic. (As are endings.) How can I describe my first encounter with Ana fairly, when my understanding of her essence has passed through infinite iterations over the past four and a half years? My”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“By accident, the bound codex taught us sustained focus, abstract thinking, logic. Our natural tendency is to be distracted—to scan the horizon constantly for predators and prospects. Books made us turn that attention inward, to build higher and higher castles within the quiet kingdoms of our minds. Through that process of reflection and deep thinking, we evolved.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“I think this had to do with the vintage of his family's money: the older the gold, the less shiny it tends to be.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Language comes from what we've seen, touched, loved, lost. And it uses knowable things to give us glimpses of what's not.”
― Alena Graedon

“Underlying every lexicon is a hopeful faith in the existence of order: i.e., that words will be arranged to make sense. The feeling of love, likewise, presupposes the existence of an object of love around which to organize. Similarly, the concept of a universal grammar presumes specific lexicons (e.g., German, Hebrew, Japanese), just as the universal feeling “love” presumes a contingent, particular love (e.g., Anana Johnson).”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Consciousness is a process of constant alienation. The mind, through reflection, confronting itself.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Although, as you well know, dictionary sales to laymen have been waning for a long time. As books have gone out of print and we’ve moved from reading to “consuming data streams,” “texting” rather than writing—as Memes have become king—the average consumer has had much less need for real meanings. And Synchronic”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds.” Language seems like proof that there’s such a thing as meaning. That we’re all connected, now and forever. Words don’t always work. Sometimes they come up short. Conversations can lead to conflict. There are failures of diplomacy. Some differences, for all the talk in the world, remain irreconcilable. People make empty promises, go back on their word, say things they don’t believe. But connection, with ourselves and others, is the only way we can live.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“think the word you might be searching for,” she finally said, “is stupefied. Or awed? Inspired?” She gave a shy little smile. “But vib. I’m not mad at you, Bartleby.” My heart felt like a rubber ball bouncing down the stairs.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“I was willing to get a microchip—a minor, outpatient procedure—my Meme could do even more for me. Make it easier to remember certain incidents in full, lustrous color, or forget things I’d rather not revisit (again and again). It could change my visual field so that walking or driving or riding in the train would feel like performing in a video game.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“Language may have limits. But it isn’t just a dim likeness in a mirror. Yes, gestures, glances, touches, taps on walls mean something. So do silences. But sometimes the word is the thing. The bridge. Sometimes we only know what we feel once it’s been said. Words may be daughters of the earth instead of heaven. But they’re not dim. And even in the faintest shimmer, there is light.”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange