Lexicon Quotes

“ 'And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. We gamble with it, hoping that by exposing ourselves, someone will find a way in. This is why the human animal will always be vulnerable: because it wants to be.' ”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“A word into the silence thrown always finds its echo somewhere where silence opens hidden lexicons.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“I had a cousin once who lived in your dictionary, inside the binding, and there was a tiny hole which he used for a door, and it led out between trichotomy and trick. Now what do you think of that? It was only a few minutes walk to trigger, then over the page to trinity, trinket and trional, and there my cousin used to fall asleep.”
― Janet Frame, Scented Gardens for the Blind

“She didn't really enjoy reading but she liked how the books were clues. Each one a piece in a puzzle. Even when they didn't fit together, they revealed a little more about what kind of picture she was making.”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“He'd basically fallen in love with her on the spot. Well, no, that wasn't accurate; that implied a binary state, a shifting from not-love to love, remaining static thereafter, and what he'd done with Brontë was fall and fall, increasingly faster the closer they drew, like planets drawn to each other's gravitational force. Doomed, he guessed, the same way.”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“We live at the level of our language.”
― Ellen Gilchrist

“The parts of our bodies we share with another person are called ‘private,’ while the ones we keep entirely to ourselves remain unlabeled; perhaps those are the truly private parts, and the so-called ‘private parts’ should instead be called ‘sharable parts’; English, it seems, delights in contradiction.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“What we're doing, or, I should say, what you're doing, since no one has taught me any good words, is dropping recipes into people's brains to cause a neurochemical reaction to knock out the filters. Tie them up just long enough to slip an instruction past. And you do that by speaking a string of words crafted for the person's psychographic segment. Probably words that were crafted decades ago and have been strengthened ever since. And it's a string of words because the brain has layers of defenses, and for the instruction to get through, they all have to be disabled at once.'

Jeremy said, 'How do you know this?'

'Do you think I'm smart?'

'I think you're scary,' he said.”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“ 'Two things.'

'Name them. I am instructing you to name them.'

'I don't think you've been in love. Not recently, anyway. I'm not sure you remember what it's like. It compromises you. It takes over your body. Like a bareword. I think love is a bareword. That's the first thing.' Yeats didn't react. If anything, he seemed baffled. 'The second thing is I wouldn't characterize Harry as indecisive and untrained with weapons.' ”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“ 'You can't stop me. Your word voodoo, it doesn't work on me. Right? So how do you think you're going to-'

Eliot produced a pistol. He didn't seem to pull it from anywhere. He just suddenly had it.

Wil's eyes stung.

'See?' Eliot put away the gun. 'There are all kinds of persuasion.' ”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“ 'Your brain doesn't process language quite like other people. Why that is, I have no idea.'

'I have a superior brain?'

'Uh,' Eliot said, 'I wouldn't go that far.' ”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“Our choice of words often reveal the depth of our knowledge … or ignorance … or that of our desire to be deemed knowledgeable.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“What was it Like?"
"What was what like?" he said, although he knew.
"Quick, I imagine. But you must have perceived something. A split second of vanishing awareness. A grasping at a shrinking light."
"It was like being fucked in the brain.”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“He shook his head to clear it, but the world grew dark and angry and would not stay upright. The world did not like to be shaken. He understood that now. He wouldn't shake it again. He felt his feet sliding away from him on silent roller skates and reached for a wall for support. The wall cursed and dug its fingers into his arm, and was probably not a wall. It was probably a person.”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“You went to school," Lee said. "I mean, at some point. And it didn't suit you very well. They wanted to teach you things you didn't care about. Dates and math and trivia about dead presidents. They didn't teach persuasion. Your ability to persuade is the single most important determinant of your quality of life, and they didn't cover that at all. Well, we do. And we're looking for students with natural aptitude.”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“Over time, there would be less and less of him and more of the tumor. His brain was being eaten by God.

He left the clinic in fine spirits. He had no intention of removing the tumor. It was the perfect solution to his dilemma: how to feed his body's desire for intimacy. He was delusional, of course. There was no higher presence filling him with love, connecting him to all things. It only felt that way. But that was fine. That was ideal. He would not have trusted a God outside his head.”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“Australians were very practical, Emily had found. They did things quickly and purposefully and to the absolute minimum standard required. It was refreshing and guenuine but sometimes led to situations like building a town around a hole.”
― Max Barry

“Any language with a literary tradition and extensive literacy will be affected by that literature.”
― Mary Hayes, A Biography of the English Language

“Wil ate without enthusiasm. His bacon tasted like nothing. Like a dead animal, fried. His eggs, aborted chickens.”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“After all, when you come across the word prothalamium and find it means a preliminary nuptial song and a yaffle is a green woodpecker-well, I ask you! You cannot let matters rest there-or can you? Peradventure you will develop into lexicomaniacs.”
― E. Norman Torry

“A broad vocabulary is generally revealed to hide a narrow mind.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana