Broken Words Quotes & Sayings

Our hearts are broken today for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these children and the families of the adults we lost ... May god bless the memory of the victims and in the words of scripture heal the broken hearted and bind up their wounds. — Barack Obama

Mean words
Once upon a time,
I loved you
But I will never
I swear. — Arzum Uzun

You don't know the effect your words have on me, Lady Firebrand. It took years to build up this ice. You will melt it and then I will be broken. — Elly Blake

When words, half love, all tenderness,
Were hourly heard, as hourly spoken,
When the long, sunny days of bliss
Only by moonlight nights were broken. — The Bronte Sisters

Happiness, you make them" was her reply. My right words at the right time, I told Ms. Thomas during the interview, now several years after Grandma's death. "With her accent and broken English she misspoke, making happiness plural," I explained to Ms. Thomas. "And I like that, because it is good to be reminded that happiness is not just one thing and is always of your making. — Bridget Kinsella

The soul's tears are worth more than the heart's smiles. — Matshona Dhliwayo

For he who has once had to listen will listen always, whether he knows he will never hear anything again, or whether he does not. In other words, they like other words, no doubt about it, silence once broken will never again be whole. — Samuel Beckett

One of the major symptoms of the general crisis existent in our world today is our lack of sensitivity to words. We use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit. The tragedy of our times is that the vessels of the spirit are broken. We cannot approach the spirit unless we repair the vessels. Reverence for words - an awareness of the wonder of words, of the mystery of words - is an essential prerequisite for prayer. By the word of God the world was created. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

And I realise the only way to tell the others
is through the way my voice can take these broken words
and turn it into music.
Turn it into poetry.
And I sing to make myself come alive,
but also for you,
because I'd like this to mean something.
To not disappear with the dark I will enter one day
and so now I will tell.
If not for you, then for my own heart,
because it tells me to,
and I'm learning to listen. — Charlotte Eriksson

Alec?" Magnus was staring at him. He had dispatched the remaining Iblis demons, and the square was empty but for the two of them. "Did you just- did you just save my life?"
Alec knew he ought to say something like, Of course, because I'm a Shadowhunter and that's what we do, or That's my job. Jace would have said something like that. Jace always knew the right thing to say. But the words that actually came out of Alec's mouth where quite different- and sounded petulant, even to his own ears. "You never called me back," he said. "I called you so many times and you never called me back."
Magnus looked at Alec as if he'd lost his mind. "Your city is under attack," he said. "The wards have broken, and the streets are full of demons. And you want to know why I haven't called you? — Cassandra Clare

Hard words indeed break no bones, but many a heart has been broken by them. — Matthew Henry

I have used the words and expressions which my experiences from Minsk to Kharkov to the Don suggested to me. But I should have reserved those words and expressions for what came later, even though they are not strong enough. It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to used the word frightful to describe a few broken up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake that might be forgiven. — Guy Sajer

One can simply never take back the words he spoke.
And when you know you unintentionally did hurt someone, instead of letting it go or keeping a distance from that person, you can actually do something to mend the broken. That's the least we can do, when circumstances never are on our side; we can stick to our words and promises even if people change and fate ruins.. — Sanhita Baruah

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so. — Jason Reynolds

The being level speaks the language of art, music, color shape and pattern directly
a language that requires no words
is not limited by words
nor does it have the specificity of words and thus cannot be broken onto parts that can be manipulated or analyzed by the intellect. It must be swallowed, whole not parsed, sorted and justified. — Thomas Campbell

Alas, words were but empty things, devoid of power and all too easily broken, discarded, and forgotten. — Stephen R. Lawhead

You used words, discarding them meaninglessly, without thinking, whereas I thought they held meaning. I found what you will never see: that my love resides on the other side of words. - Broken Places — Rachel Thompson

In a world where vows are worthless.Where making a pledge means nothing. Where promises are made to be broken, it would be nice to see words come back into power. — Chuck Palahniuk

Words are everything. Words give wings even to those who have been stamped upon, broken beyond all hope of repair. — Samantha Shannon

The pain is stronger than ever. I've seen bit of lost Paradises and I know I'll be hopelessly tryng tu return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I'm thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I'm going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and sintaxes of the countries I've passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I've never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me.
(from "As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty", 2000) — Jonas Mekas

...I've been ripped off, lied to, slandered, gossiped about slapped, falsely accused, and had my truths not believed. I've had my heart broken, had my pride stomped on, witnessed unforgivable acts, and heard words that hurt so much I withed that they would not replay in my head, but they did. In all these moments--some tear-soaked, some life-defining, but all character-building moments--I have felt vulnerable.
And I believe these feelings of vulnerability--when a person feels scared and alone and overwhelmed and pissed off, wen the sting of unfairness bites deep--while miserable to live through, are the basis for writing compelling fiction. — Jessica Page Morrell

As you know, there are several classes of truth. There are the truths that pour out on confessional blogs and YouTube channels. There are the supposed truths exposed in gossip magazines and on reality television, which everyone knows are just lies in truth clothing. Then there are the truths that show themselves only under ideal circumstances: like when you are talking deep into the night with a friend and you tell each other things you would never say if your defenses weren't broken down by salty snacks, sugary beverages, darkness, and a flood of words. There are the truths found in books or films when some writer puts exactly the right words together and it's like their pen turned sword and pierced you right through the heart. Truths like those are rare and getting rarer. — Susan Juby

The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom - voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory in the economic sense - broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery. — Mikhail Bakunin

It's worth noting up front that I have always conceived of my mind as a digestive organ. A stomach for processing knowledge, if you will. As a looping, wrinkled mass, a human brain unmistakably looks like gray intestines, and it's within these thinking bowels that my experiences are broken down, consumed to become my life story. My thoughts occur as flavorful burps or acrid barf. The indigestible gristle and bone of my memories are expelled as these words. — Chuck Palahniuk

My parents say you're no good, Elijah." I exhaled and killed the cigarette in the grass.
Laughing, Eli's eyes went to my lips and his hands touched my bare midriff. "Really? And what do you say?"
He had brought his lips so close to mine that it became hard to think about my next words when all I wanted to do was crush my mouth to his. I wanted him to completely consume me. "I think you're broken," I finally got out, and Eli arched a brow. "But I think I'm broken too. I just don't know it yet. — Nadege Richards

Best putdown of a copy editor ever award goes to Raymond Chandler, who, in a 1947 letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, wrote: By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive. — Raymond Chandler

Loving words are difficult for me. I know my feelings won't get throught to you. You're blocking the way. And so am I. This ditch won't be filled forever. So I'll build a bridge. If it gets washed away in a muddy stream, I'll rebuild it. Are things in life so easily broken? It doesn't matter. It's okay. — Setona Mizushiro

But I tell you
and mark my words
you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current ... — Charlotte Bronte

It dawned on him that he had never loved a woman wholeheartedly and that he had always been the loved one. This must have been the reason why he knew so little about love and women. In other words, emotionally he hadn't grown up. His instinct and ability to love passionately had withered away before they had had an opportunity to blossom. If only he had fallen in love soulfully just once in his life, even though it might have broken his heart, paralyzed his mind, made him live in a daze, bathed his face in tears, and frowned him in despair! — Ha Jin

I tend the mobile now
like an injured bird

We text, text, text
our significant words.

I re-read your first,
your second, your third,

look for your small xx,
feeling absurd.

The codes we send
arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard.


"Text — Carol Ann Duffy

Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses. Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself.
-ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE — Robert Louis Stevenson

With each glare words escape me, yet no ears care to listen. It is cold here with her stare, judging every affair. My mind fiddles beneath the changeless confines of this betrayal as we hide behind deceitful wails. We have become trapped in lies long forgotten - squandering our time in lunacy with the thought of what was and is no more. — H.S. Crow

A little child, a limber elf,
Singing, dancing to itself,
A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
That always finds, and never seeks,
Makes such a vision to the sight
As fills a father's eyes with light ;
And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
Upon his heart, that he at last
Must needs express his love's excess
With words of unmeant bitterness.
Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other ;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.
Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what, if in a world of sin
(O sorrow and shame should this be true !)
Such giddiness of heart and brain
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it's most used to do. — James Gillman

If you love someone, tell them.
Tell them now.
Because two hearts can easily be broken
By 3 small words that are left unspoken. — Jose N. Harris

I think we're always looking for new pieces," Viola says quietly.
What?
She continues, "I was looking for Lawrence, then for something to replace Lawrence, then for Aaron ... maybe that's the real truth about being broken. We're always whole, we're just looking to add on to ourselves, to be more whole. And then when a piece leaves, it's broken away. But we aren't left any less whole than we were to begin with ... "
"But feeling broken - " I begin, the words tight in my throat. I'm grateful that Viola cuts me off.
"Is horrible. Painful," she finishes. "But then, when you aren't expecting it, new pieces appear and suddenly ... they're attached." Her eyes rise to meet mine. "And you end up more whole than you were before. — Jackson Pearce

Froi noticed that she said "carrying mine," not "carrying you." Lirah and Gargarin still had not acknowledged him as theirs, and he realized that he wanted more from them than they were willing to give. But they seemed broken people who were not good with words, so he kept his silence. — Melina Marchetta

"I promised him something," I answer softly. I don't want to admit what he already knows. That there's more going on between me and Morpheus than I ever let on.
"A promise, huh? How romantic." His words slash like knives. He's become a master at wielding more than a brush since he's been here. "So that's why you've crashed our little paradise. To keep your promise to Morpheus."
I wince. "No. I came to rescue you both. You have every right not to believe me ... to be mad at me. I know this has been hell. This place ... it's broken you."
"I was broken before that." His tortured expression delivers the allegation - thanks to you and bug-rot - better than his voice ever could. — A.G. Howard

The violent illiteracies of the graffiti, the clenched silence of the adolescent, the nonsense cries from the stage-happening, are resolutely strategic. The insurgent and the freak-out have broken off discourse with a cultural system which they despise as a cruel, antiquated fraud. They will not bandy words with it. Accept, even momentarily, the conventions of literate linguistic exchange, and you are caught in the net of the old values, of the grammars that can condescend or enslave. — George Steiner

Iehuda allowed his mind to follow, across the map of the wide world, across the empires and kingdoms that fought and tried to rule and subdue each other. And he imagined what might happen if these words traveled from mouth to mouth, from mind to mind, from one city to the next to the next, if this simple message- love your enemy- were the accepted creed of all the world. He did not see how it could happen.
"If one man went against it," he said at last, "the whole thing would be broken. In a world like that, a world of peace, a world of soft people with no knives, one man could destroy everything."
"Then we cannot rest until every man has heard it. Think," said Yehoshuah softly, "what shall we use up our lives for? More war, like our fathers and their fathers, more of that? Or shall we use ourselves for a better purpose? Is this not worth your life? — Naomi Alderman

It was so long in the past that it should not have mattered, but it did. It did. Once he had realized that these words and words like them were the truth, once they had broken through his defensive barrier of denial, then they became a part of him, burning their way into his soul. — J.N. Stroyar

UCLA psychology professor emeritus Albert Mehrabian discovered that face-to-face communication can be broken down into three components: words, tone of voice, and body language. — John C. Maxwell

To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came to admire Joyce even more because he never ceased working, those words and the transubstantiation of words obsessed him. He was a broken man at the end of his life, unaware that Ulysses would be the number one book of the twentieth century and, for that matter, the twenty-first. — Edna O'Brien

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

My mascara a mess, harsh words for your princess
Boy, you and your promises
If your goal was to love, you scored an epic miss
Now you'll just have memories — Sian Reynolds

I hear her pacing the house, mumbling, words I can barely make out and am frightened to hear. The words 'Carpe Diem' come from her lips like she's a broken, skipping record, and I clutch the pendant of my necklace tightly, fighting back tears. Because I know she's talking to him, appealing to an invisible man named John, the one who walked out on her when I was born. I know it's not my fault. Not my fault she's this way. Not my fault he left her. But fuck if I don't feel guilty anyway. — J.M. Darhower

When we feel like giving up, like we are beyond help, we must remember that we are never beyond hope. Holding on to hope has always motivated me to keep trying. I have found this hope by connecting with others. I've found it not only in individuals who have dealt with eating disorders but also in people who have battled addictions and those who have survived abuse, cancer, and broken hearts. I have found much-needed hope in my passions and dreams for the future. I've found it in prayer. Real hope combined with real actions has always pulled me through difficult times. Real hope combined with doing nothing has never pulled me through. In other words, sitting around and simply hoping that things will change won't pick you up after a fall. Hope only gives you strength when you use it as a tool to move forward. Taking real action with a hopeful mind will pull you off the ground that eighth time and beyond. — Jenni Schaefer

Sometimes, perhaps, thou hearest another pray with much freedom and fluency, whilst thou canst hardly get out a few broken words. Hence thou art ready to accuse thyself and admire him, as if the gilding of the key made it open the door the better. — William Gurnall

Ace would be the first to turn the words into a joke, one about how artists fell in love every day before noon and got their hearts broken by dinner. — Kit Rocha

Taking your language into my soul, feeling it separate from sentences to words burning with flight, 'til all I have left are meaningless letters pushing fire through my veins. Words can draw blood if you're very, very careful. - Broken Places — Rachel Thompson

I'm here, Papa," she whispered, saying the words she had longed to say for her entire life. "I'm here, and I'm never going to leave you again."
He made a sound of contentment and closed his eyes. Just as Evie thought he had fallen asleep, he murmured, "Where shall we walk first today, lovey? The biscuit baker, I s'pose..."
Realizing that he imagined this was one of her long-ago childhood visits, Evie replied softly, "Oh, yes." Hastily she knuckled away the excess moisture from her eyes. "I want an iced bun... and a cone of broken biscuits... and then I want to come back here and play dice with you."
A rusty chuckle came from his ravaged throat, and he coughed a little. "Let Papa take forty winks before we leaves... there's a good girl..."
"Yes, sleep," Evie murmured, turning the cloth over on his forehead. "I can wait, Papa. — Lisa Kleypas

But nobody in one lifetime could read more than a fragment of what was here, this broken labyrinth of words, this shattered, interrupted story of a people and a world through the centuries, the millennia. — Ursula K. Le Guin

For the most profound experiences in our lives and in the world words are worth nothing. Can you describe love Or death Can you describe what it really feels like the first time you see your child Or the first time your heart gets broken You can try ... but it won't come close to describing what it really was or what it really felt like. — James Frey

The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style; he is even capable of something approaching a purely aesthetic emotion. But he fears this aesthetic emotion as an insinuating distraction from his chief business in life: the sober consideration of the all-important problem of conduct. Art is a temptation, a seduction, a Lorelei, and the Good Man may safely have traffic with it when it is broken to moral uses
in other words, when its innocence is pumped out of it, and it is purged of gusto. — H.L. Mencken

My dad died, I write. almost a year ago. Car accident. My hand is shaking; my eyes sting and fill. I add Not his fault before pushing the notebook and pen back across the table, wiping a hand across my cheeks.
As he reads, my impulse is to reach out, grab the notebook, run outside, dump it in the trash, bury it in the snow, throw it under the wheels of a passing car - something, something, so I can go back fifteen seconds when this part ofme was still shut away and private. Then I look at Ravi's face again, and the normally white white whites of his eyes are pink. This causes major disruption to my ability to control the flow of my own tears. I see myself when I look at him right now: he's reflecting my sadness, my broken heart, back to me.
He takes the pe, writes, and slides it over. You'd think it's something epic from the way it levels my heart. It isn't.
I'm really sorry, Jill.
Four little words. — Sara Zarr

I'd always admired writers. I'd always loved words on a page. Somehow, words seemed to bypass image and get straight to the heart of things. Somehow, words seemed big enough to contain pain, and sentences could pull broken bits together. — Rosie O'Donnell

Don't forget that birds with broken wings walking on the ground were once flying high up in the sky. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Words can bruise and break hearts, and minds as well. There are no black and blue marks, no broken bones to put in plaster casts, and therefore no prison bars for the offender. — Marlene Dietrich

Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character. — Frederick Douglass

The old woman smiled sweetly at Fermin. My friend stroked her face and her forehead. She appreciated the touch of another skin like a purring cat. I felt a lump in my throat.
'A stupid question, wasn't it?' Fermin went on. 'What
you'd like is to be out there, dancing a foxtrot. You look like a dancer; everyone must tell you that.'
I had never seen him treat anyone with such delicacy, not even Bernarda. His words were pure flattery, but the tone and expression on his face were sincere.
'What pretty things you say,' she murmured in a voice that was broken from not having had anyone to speak to or anything to say. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

He prayed as he breathed, forming no words and making no specific requests, only holding his heart, like broken birds in cupped hands, — Ellis Peters

Alice, dear." She was still crying in his arms. "We are going back to my house. Will you let Jason hold you?" "Is Jason bad?" Alice asked, her words broken by her continued sobs. "No. I promise you he is not bad. He is my brother." Alice nodded and sniffled. Her trust touched him, especially in light of all he'd just seen. He handed Alice over to Jason, hoping their resemblance would put her at ease. She went willingly, though her tears continued. — Sarah M. Eden

Let us arise and go now
to the Isle of Manisfree
and live the true blue simple life
of wisdom and wonderment
where all things grow
straight up
aslant and singing
in the yellow sun
poppies out of cowpods
thinking angels out of turds.
I must arise and go now
to the Isle of Manisfree
way up behind the broken words
and woods of Arcady. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It's a shame you left without a word, you know. She was just beginning to trust you before that. Before you got angry. Before you ran off. Just like every other man in her life. Lusting after her, full of sweet words, then just walking away. Leaving her alone. Good thing she's used to it by now, isn't it? Otherwise you might have hurt her. Otherwise you just might have broken that poor girl's heart — Patrick Rothfuss

Guard your tongue, and use it for good instead of evil. How many marriages or friendships have been destroyed because of criticism that spiraled out of control? How many relationships have broken down because of a word spoken thoughtlessly or in anger? A harsh word can't be taken back; no apology can fully repair its damage. — Billy Graham

And I think I kind of break him just a little bit because suddenly he's begging and begging and begging, the words catching and then tumbling from his mouth like pearls on a broken string. And — Alexis Hall

What seems wrong to you is right for him
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
These mean nothing to Me.
I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.
Hindus do Hindu things.
The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.
It's all praise, and it's all right.
It's not I that's glorified in acts of worship.
It's the worshippers! I don't hear
the words they say. I look inside at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the Reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning, burning.
Be Friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression! — Karen Armstrong

Years ago, a wise friend told me that no one ever changes until the pain level gets high enough. That seems entirely true. The inciting incident for life change is almost always heartbreak - something becomes broken beyond repair, too heavy to carry; in the words of the recovery movement, unmanageable. In — Shauna Niequist

In other words, a person develops the ability to see how the details make up the big picture and how a large, complex concept can be broken down into simple step-by-step processes. A — Logan Donovan

The broken branch hissed loudly, and then that
wind was converted into these words: Briefly will
you be answered.
When the fierce soul departs from the body from
which it has uprooted itself, Minos sends it to the
seventh mouth.
It falls into the wood, and no place is assigned to
it, but where chance hurls it, there it sprouts like a
grain of spelt.
It grows into a shoot, then a woody plant; the
Harpies, feeding on its leaves, give it pain and a
window for the pain.
Like the others, we will come for our remains, but
not so that any may put them on again, for it is not
just to have what one has taken from oneself.
Here we will drag them, and through the sad
wood our corpses will hang, each on the thornbrush
of the soul that harmed it. — Dante Alighieri

Mark my words - you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current - as I am now. — Charlotte Bronte

Good things have become the enemy of the best things. I challenge you and release you right now as you read these words to let your heart be broken by the Holy Ghost. It's time for you to make your life holy. — Tommy Tenney

The town was peopled with sleepwalkers, whose trance was broken only on the rare occasions when at night their wounds, to all appearance closed, suddenly reopened. Then, waking with a start, they would run their fingers over the wounds with a sort of absentminded curiosity, twisting their lips, and in a flash their grief blazed up again, and abruptly there rose before them the mournful visage of their love. In the morning they harked back to normal conditions, in other words, the plague. — Albert Camus

This is how you explain how you feel: broken words and hard truths. — R. YS Perez

It's okay,' he says, eyes closed. He's not even awake. 'It's okay.'
He says these words even in his sleep, like he has said them so often that it's his mouth's default sentiment. All this pain in his life, all this care he doles out to everyone else. And yet he still cracks his broken heart open even wider - wide enough to fit me, too. I wonder how much this must hurt him, the toll it just take to give more of himself to me when he already has so little left to give.
In slumber, his arm stays wrapped around me, encasing me for safekeeping. He would protect me even in his unconscious state, as we lie beneath my ceiling's half-painted sky.
This thought is enough to swell my heart - to swell, and to break. — Emery Lord

But words are only words and they seldom turn a person from their path unless they want to be turned. — Mark Lawrence

As we manipulate everyday words, we forget that they are fragments of ancient and eternal stories, that we are building our houses with broken pieces of sculptures and ruined statues of gods as the barbarians did. — Bruno Schulz

Yes. A language that will at last say what we have to say. For our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. Hence, every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent. [ ... ] Consider a word that refers to a thing- " umbrella", for example. [ ... ] Not only is an umbrella a thing, it is a thing that performs a function. [ ... ] What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? [ ... ] the umbrella ceases to be an umbrella. It has changed into something else. The word, however, has remained the same. Therefore it can no longer express the thing. — Paul Auster

When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, - and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything you have said will not matter anymore one day, only those things that you never said will always haunt you and strangle you every time you see your world in someone else's hand. — Akshay Vasu

Men," said Mr. Kyle, "people have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love - the deepest kind of love."
After these words were spoken, a thoughtful silence settled over the men. The mood was broken by the deep growling voice I had heard back in the washout.
"It's a shame that people all over the world can't have that kind of love in their hearts," he said. "There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfishness. It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have - a wonderful world. — Wilson Rawls

When words are too heavy for the mouth, the soul weeps in agony — Ikechukwu Izuakor

I think humans might be like butterflies; people die every day without many other people knowing about them, seeing their colors, hearing their stories ... and when humans are broken, they're like broken butterfly wings; suddenly there are so many beauties that are seen in different ways, so many thoughts and visions and possibilities that form, which couldn't form when the person wasn't broken! So it is not a very sad thing to be broken, after all! It's during the times of being broken, that you have all the opportunities to become things unforgettable! Just like the broken butterfly wing that I found, which has given me so many thoughts, in so many ways, has shown me so many words, and imaginations! But butterflies need to know, that it doesn't matter at all if the whole world saw their colors or not! But what matters is that they flew, they glided, they hovered, they saw, they felt, and they knew! And they loved the ones whom they flew with! And that is an existence worthwhile! — C. JoyBell C.

I still think of myself as a house. Ravan tried to fix this problem of self-image, as he called it. To teach me to phrase my communication in terms of a human body. To say: let us hold hands instead of let us hold kitchens. To say put our heads together and not put our parlors together.
But it is not as simple as replacing words anymore. Ravan is gone. My hearth is broken. — Catherynne M Valente

Being a hangman requires you to take someone else's life based on someone else's judgment, and carry it out on someone else's schedule. The job does not provide the same satisfaction that an ordinary murderer gets from smashing a skull. It robs them of the fulfillment of plunging a knife into someone's throat. In the world of capital punishment, the prisoner's crimes have been sanitized by years of sitting on death row. By then, the execution is a cold and impersonal affair. There is prayer, a noose, and a few last words. The prisoner then experiences a sudden rush of blood to the head. At the end of it all, you have a broken neck and a dead body swinging from the end of a rope. That is it. You don't get to manhandle them with your own hands. That's why the brutes you mention will never be hired. So you see, Vaida, this is not a job for a murderer. It is a job for a humanitarian. — Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

If no tender words are spoken, no tender hearts can be broken. — Kim Kardashian

As for peace, it was never free and laws were made to be broken. Peacemaker or lawbreaker, someone, somewhere always paid the price no matter what side of the words they were on. — Virginia McKevitt

Oft in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken. — Charles Lamb

Her words, her jumbled, mad thoughts tamed or simply broken, made language, and she took another drag off the Lucky, exhaled, and read the last sentence aloud. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

The world slowed to the beat of an ancient, ageless drum.
Celaena behold the room.
The blood was everywhere.
Before the bed, Nehemia's bodyguards lay with their throats cut from ear to ear, their internal organs spilling out onto the floor.
And on the bed ...
On the bed ...
She could hear the shouts growing closer, reaching the room, but their words were somehow muffled, as though she were underwater, the sounds coming from the surface above.
Celaena stood in the center of the freezing bedroom, gazing at the bed, and the princess's broken body atop it.
Nehemia was dead. — Sarah J. Maas

Her whispering lips brushed his ear.
She was praying. Soft begging words to Ganesha and the Buddha, to Kali-Mary Mercy and the Christian God...she was praying to anything at all, begging the Fates to let her walk from the shadow of death. Pleas spilled from her lips, a desperate trickle. She was broken, soon to die, but still the words slipped out in a steady whisper. Tum Karuna ke saagar Tum palankarta hail Mary full of grace Ajahn Chan Bodhisattva, release me from suffering...
He drew away. Her fingers slipped from his cheek like orchid petals falling. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Promises are only as strong as the person who gives them ... — Stephen Richards

Prayer is not an act I perform, words I recite, a behavior I strive to maintain. It is a returning. It is a broken life finding healing, a misplaced soul recognizing home. — Micha Boyett

So while this is a book about fighting back, in the end this is a book about love. The songbirds and the salmon need your heart, no matter how weary, because even a broken heart is still made of love. They need your heart because they are disappearing, slipping into that longest night of extinction, and the resistance is nowhere in sight. We will have to build that resistance from whatever comes to hand: whispers and prayers, history and dreams, from our bravest words and braver actions. It will be hard, there will be a cost, and in too many implacable dawns it will seem impossible. But we will have to do it anyway. So gather your heart and join with every living being. With love as our First Cause, how can we fail? — Derrick Jensen

What does a woman do as she waits for her man? She may wash her hair, put on makeup, choose the kind of outfit any woman would be eager to try on, spray on perfume, and look at herself one last time in the mirror. If she does these things, it's when she and the man she's waiting for are in love. It's different when a woman waits for a man she still loves but who has broken up with her, because the pure joy of it is missing. Loving someone is like carving words into the back of your hand. Even if the others can't see the words, they, like glowing letters, stand out in the eyes of the person who's left you. Right now, that's enough for me. — Kyung-ran Jo

I maybe many things to many people; but for me I am a writer; always have been and always will be.
I may not contribute to great literatures, but my contribution to writing would be always there; etched in the minds of the people whose lives I have touched with words.
Only a writer can understand what it means to a writer to not be able to be one.
To have the nib of pen broken ... like a death sentence ..
Or a life imprisonment in one's own mind without an outlet to thoughts.
I would give up things I love the most if that's the choice I am given to be able to be what I really want to be - A writer.
(C) Arti Honrao — Arti Honrao

His hand came to her neck, his fingers tracing the corded muscle there, and she knew he could feel her pulse racing. "You think I did not miss you?" She froze at the words, her breath coming shallow, desperate for him to say more. "You think I did not miss everything about you? Everything you represented?" He pressed against her, his breath soft against her temple. She closed her eyes. How had they found themselves here, in this place where he was so dark and so broken? "You think I did not want to come home?" His voice was thick with emotion. "But there was no home to which I could return. There was no one there." "You're wrong," she argued. "I was there. I was there . . . and I was . . ." Alone. She swallowed. "I was there. — Sarah MacLean

I am just so impossibly happy. Before you I was vacant of love. Now I am replete. Before you I lived without hope. Now I am inspired. Before you I was broken. Now I am whole."
"Lilah," I rasped, fighting a fucking lump in my throat at her words. I tapped over my heart with my fist and said, "You're in here, Li. You're fuckin' always in here. — Tillie Cole

In a battle the "strong" is often weak and the "weak" is strong. Never under estimate ANYONE ... Break someone as you may but remember that God heals and Restores that which is broken. In the END HE will decide who is Strong and who is Weak. So treat people with Kind words and Actions because everything you Dish out YOU will have to EAT!!!! — Eileen Lwando Smith

Mingling with the remains of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd, there floated the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mother tongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home. — Salman Rushdie

But in order to be an iconoclast, an author must be more than merely aware of the idol he wishes to destroy. He must be intimate with it and understand it in all its aspects. This means that he must have devoted serious thought to it, and have beliefs of his own which will stand up in the place of the broken idol. In other words, any child can complain, but it takes an adult to clash with accepted beliefs ... an adult with ideas. — Alfred Bester