Middle English Quotes & Sayings

There seems also to be a tremendous risk to indigenous cultures if we insist that all scholarship be conducted in English. We are, for example, dealing with ancient and very highly-developed cultures in Korea, Japan, China and the Middle East. What is the impact on cultural and scholarly vitality forcing everyone to do their work in English? I do not have an answer, but this issue has been very much on my mind. — Henry Rosovsky

At Columbia University, the semester had already started in the first week of September and here I was, in the middle of October. I arrived in New York on October 17, 1947. Crossing the Atlantic took one week. Most of the passengers were Americans of English, Irish or Scottish descent, who had visited their families, for the first time after the war. The food on the boat consisted mostly of fish, all kinds of seafood that I had never eaten before, that I knew only from reading and from dictionaries. Whether it was turbot or cod or hake or even salmon - everything was boiled and tasteless. — Pearl Fichman

She was in the middle of a city [Nominally a city. It was the size of an English county town, or, translated into American terms, a shopping mall.] at the time. — Terry Pratchett

But inside itself, in the very sap of it, the tree (so to speak) never forgot that other tree in Narnia to which it belonged. Sometimes it would move mysteriously when there was no wind blowing: I think that when this happened there were high winds in Narnia and the English tree quivered.... However that might be, it was proved later that there was still magic in its wood. For when Digory was quite middle-aged...there was a great storm all over the south of England which blew the tree down. He couldn't bear to have it simply chopped up for firewood, so he had part of the timber made into a wardrobe, which he put in his big house in the country. And though he himself did not discover the magic properties of that wardrobe, someone else did.... — C.S. Lewis

When we recall the great influence which Spenser's poetry has exerted on English poets who have lived and written since his day, we can clearly see how the two kinds of Platonism - a direct Platonism, and a Platonism long ago transmuted and worked right down into the emotions of common people by the passionate Christianity of the Dark and Middle Ages - combined to beget the infinite suggestiveness which is now contained in such words as 'love' and 'beauty'. Let us remember, then, that every time we abuse these terms, or use them too lightly, we are draining them of their power; every time a society journalist or a film producer exploits this vast suggestiveness to tickle a vanity or dignify a lust, he is squandering a great pile of spiritual capital which has been laid up by centuries of weary effort. — Owen Barfield

He was a poet who sometimes taught Free University classes or travelled in the western states of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, speaking to high school English classes, stunning middle-class boys and girls (he hoped) with the news that poetry was alive - narcoleptic, to be sure, but still possessed of a certain hideous vitality. — Stephen King

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. — Jeffrey Eugenides

I did my BA in English lit, and hated the restriction - I'd always read more in translation than not; coming from a working-class background, what I knew of as British literature - the writers who made big prize lists and/or were stocked in WH Smith, Doncaster's only bookshop until I was 17 - seemed incredibly, alienatingly middle-class. Then in 2009, just after the financial crash, I graduated with no more specific skill than 'can analyse a bit of poetry'. — Deborah Smith

His spirit chaunged house and wente ther,
As I cam nevere, I kan nat tellen wher. — Geoffrey Chaucer

I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own. — Jeffrey Eugenides

With the ascension of Charles I to the throne we come at last to the Central Period of English History (not to be confused with the Middle Ages, of course), consisting in the utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive). — W.C. Sellar

The language of Shakespeare is the first and lasting affirmation of the great changes that took place in the sixteenth century, leaving the Middle English of Chaucer far behind. In many ways, the language has changed less in the 400 years since Shakespeare wrote than it did in the 150 years before he wrote. — Ronald Carter

We can trace the communitarian fantasy that lies at the root of all humanism back to the model of a literary society, in which participation through reading the canon reveals a common love of inspiring messages. At the heart of humanism so understood we discover a cult or club fantasy: the dream of the portentous solidarity of those who have been chosen to be allowed to read. In the ancient world - indeed, until the dawn of the modern nation-states - the power of reading actually did mean something like membership of a secret elite; linguistic knowledge once counted in many places as the provenance of sorcery. In Middle English the word 'glamour' developed out of the word 'grammar'. The person who could read would be thought easily capable of other impossibilities. — Peter Sloterdijk

Did you know the English wouldn't dream of putting olive oil on food? They use it for ear infections. Freddie told me."
"Yes, I've heard their cuisine hasn't evolved since the Middle Ages. — Glenn Haybittle

I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. "Which is all very well," she said bitterly, "but the only essay subject you can find enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is 'How to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hall'. — Helene Hanff

They had tried to reproduce their own attitude to life upon the stage, and to dress up as the middle-class English people they actually were. — E. M. Forster

To Michael Soule's three C's-cores, carnivores, and corridors-Foreman added "three W's: wilderness, wildways, and my favorite word in the English language, wildeor, which is Middle English and means 'self-willed animal.' The ancient people who saw animals as self-willed and the land as self-willed had respect for the earth. — Mary Ellen Hannibal

The people who perpetrated the terror of the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings are something different because these people were obviously not desperate and poor refugee dwellers. They were middle class, educated enough to speak English, to be able to go to flight school, to come to America, to live in Florida. — Edward Said

I was always an avid reader of books. My vocabulary, my English are all thanks to that reading habit. Reading keeps me grounded. I came from a very middle class family - poor, in fact. — Madhur Bhandarkar

During the late Victorian period, one English woman in Hampshire who suffered from fits reportedly ate an entire New Testament in an attempt to cure her illness, putting each page in the middle of a sandwich. — Martyn Lyons

Joshua needed to eat something before embarking upon it, and hence stood in line behind an overtattooed prick who couldn't decide between banana and pumpkin bread, while the barista in a Che Guevara hat (yet presumably fluent in Middle fucking English) looked on indifferently. — Aleksandar Hemon

My English teachers gave me a copy of Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' when I left high school, which has always been very special to me - it was the novel that introduced me to dystopian fiction. I'm also influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, John Wyndham and Middle English dream-visions. — Samantha Shannon

What Joan impressed on the men by her faith and her actions, then, had more to do with the things of God that the machinery of war or prevailing politics. For her the struggle against English occupation and the eventual permanent establishment of French sovereignty were matters of justice, and justice was regarded as a major virtue in the Middle Ages. From justice came the origins of chivalry, which was about much more than mere courtesy: it concerned the order of a sovereign society and its place in the economy of God's plan for the world. — Donald Spoto

A very large part of English middle-class education is devoted to the training of servants ... In so far as it is, by definition, the training of upper servants, it includes, of course, the instilling of that kind of confidence which will enable the upper servants to supervise and direct the lower servants. — Raymond Williams

By the middle of Henry VIII's reign, the white meats - that is, dairy products - were considered common fare and people from all classes would eat meat whenever they could get it. — Clarissa Dickson Wright

Who wouldn't want to vote for a guy who was a peaceful, radical, non-violent revolutionary; who hung around with lepers, hookers, and crooks; who never spoke English; was not an American citizen; anti-capitalism; totally anti-death penalty; anti-public prayer (Matthew 6:5); but never once anti-gay; didn't mention abortion; and was a long-haired, brown-skinned, homeless, middle-eastern, Jew? — John Fugelsang

Middle English is an exciting field - almost uncharted, I begin to think, because as soon as one turns detailed personal attention on to any little corner of it, the received notions and ideas seem to crumple up and fall to pieces - as far as language goes, at any rate. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The history of life was not the bumbling progress - the very English, middle-class progress - Victorian thought had wanted it to be, but violent, a thing of dramatic, cumulative transformations: in the old formulation, more revolution than evolution. — Salman Rushdie

We plowed through Chaucer, and I learned to assist her using the Middle English dictionary. One year we spent the winter painstakingly noting each instance of symbolism within Pilgrim's Progress on separate recipe cards, and I was delighted to see our pile grow to be thicker than the book itself. She set her hair in curlers while listening to records of Carl Sandburg's poems over and over, and instructed me on how to hear the words differently each time. After discovering Susan Sontag, she explained to me that even meaning itself is a constructed concept, and I learned how to nod and pretend to understand. My — Hope Jahren

What has been termed 'correct' English is nothing other than the blatant legitimation of the white middle-class code. — Dale Spender

In the Middle Ages, I think the French kings murdered slightly fewer of their family members than the English kings, though I haven't actually counted the heads. — Karen Maitland

When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at the time - can you imagine, in the middle of the IRA bombing campaigns? I saw an ad inviting Irish applicants for an induction course, so I signed up. — Colm Toibin

Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great English middle class, their passionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life. — Matthew Arnold

In the end it comes down to two rival versions of the English middle afternoon. Post-Barrett, Pink Floyd kept on in a middle-afternoonish vein, but they fell in love with the idea of portentous storm clouds in the offing somewhere over Grantchester ... Barrett's afternoonishness was far more supple and engaging. It superimposed the hippie cult of eternal solstice on the pre-teatime daydreams of one's childhood, occasioned by a slick of sunlight on a chest of drawers ... His afternoonishness is lit by an importunate adult intelligence that can't quite get back to the place it longs to be ... Barrett created the same precocious longing in adolescents.
I remember 'See Emily Play' drifting across a school corridor in 1967 ... and I remember the powerful wish to stay suspended indefinitely in that music ... I also remember the quasi-adult intimation that this wasn't possible.
[from the London Review of Books for January 2, 2003] — Jeremy Harding

We are from the very middle class family. We have not come from the English medium school. We came from our regional languages school. — Mamata Banerjee

This is an important list at the heart of phonics instruction. It alphabetically lists 99 single phonemes (speech sounds) and consonant blends (usually two phonemes), and it gives example words for each of these; often for their use in the beginning, middle, and end of words. These example words are also common English words, many taken from the list of Instant Words. This list solves the problem of coming up with a good common word to illustrate a phonics principle for lessons and worksheets. — Edward B. Fry

In our English popular religion the common conception of a future state of bliss is that of ... a kind of perfected middle-class home, with labour ended, the table spread, goodness all around, the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant. — Matthew Arnold

I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers to care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic
it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor. — John Taylor Gatto

Although the advice that you get if you got to see Margaret is 'stand up for yourself, shout back, and argue the toss and then she will respect you', the trouble is that sort of advice to the English middle-class male of a certain age doesn't actually help us very much because we've always been brought up to believe that it's extremely rude to shout back at women. — Julian Critchley

It has been our experience that American houses insist on very comprehensive editing; that English houses as a rule require little or none and are inclined to go along with the author's script almost without query. The Canadian practice is just what you would expect
a middle-of-the-road course. We think the Americans edit too heavily and interfere with the author's rights. We think that the English publishers don't take enough editorial responsibility. Naturally, then, we consider our editing to be just about perfect. There's no doubt about it, we Canadians are a superior breed! (in a letter to author Margaret Laurence, dated May, 1960) — Jack McClelland

In Middle English, a frankeleyn is a free man, an owner of land but not of title: neither a serf nor a peasant but not a nobleman, either. There — Jill Lepore

1970's was a time when English medium schools left such a distinctive impression in the field of education that middle-class parents with unexceptional income clamoured for admissions in private schools even before the birth of their offsprings. One occasion when catholicity genuinely assisted parents was when obtaining a spot for their children at catholic schools despite intense competition. — Neetha Joseph

In Hollywood through the 50s, there were black, English, and Middle European housekeepers and maids. — Bill Condon

My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French. — Lorraine Bracco

Oberon Did Middle English hounds bark with an extra syllable on the end? like 'woofe'? — Kevin Hearne

The gh at the end of many modern words, however, like dough, cough, and trough, is actually an artifact not of Dutch orthographic tendencies, but of Norman distaste for the Middle English letter yogh, which looked like this: 3. Yogh fell out of use around the end of the fifteenth century. — David Wolman

I think we've had rather too much dirt rather than not enough. That's not a prudish English remark, but a statement of saturation. These up-and-coming young men," she splutters. "Penelope Fitzgerald
they think, 'Ah! Middle-aged lady with frizzy hair and a nice smile; she must be writing tastefully.' I say she's writing against taste, quite savagely. But they don't pick it up because they're brash young men poncing about, waving their blood and thunder and condoms! — A.S. Byatt

The Americans set up impromptu checkpoints along the roads and erected stop signs in English - a language and script that not all Iraqis understood. Cars that failed to stop before the checkpoint were fired upon. I witnessed two entire families killed at the same checkpoint within twenty minutes of each other. — Lynsey Addario

The working classes in England were always sentimental, and the Irish and Scots and Welsh. The upper-class English are the stiff-upper-lipped ones. And the middle class. They're the ones who are crippled emotionally because they can't move up, and they're desperate not to move down. — Tracey Ullman

For some hippies, this vision could only be realised by rejecting scientific progress as a false God and returning to nature. Others, in contrast, believed that technological progress would inevitably turn their libertarian principles into social fact. Crucially, influenced by the theories of Marshall McLuhan, these technophiliacs thought that the convergence of media, computing and telecommunications would inevitably create the electronic agora - a virtual place where everyone would be able to express their opinions without fear of censorship. Despite being a middle-aged English professor, McLuhan preached the radical message that the power of big business and big government would be imminently overthrown by the intrinsically empowering effects of new technology on individuals. — Richard Barbrook

Besides," she says, eyes twinkling mischievously, "it'd never work out between us. I'm still holding a candle for Professor Haven."
"How could I compete with a middle-aged English professor?"
"Well," she says, "you could do, but it'd be useless. Something about his receding hairline just drives me mad. — Seventhswan

C'mon. I'll show you."
"Thou speakest strange!" Pearl said.
"So do thou!" I said.
"Thee!"
"Thou!" I said. — Eileen Favorite

For a moment it seemed that her impeccably impractical education - in which she'd learned about Middle English and Duchamp's urinal and sub-Saharan droughts but had never been taught how to apply for a credit card or answer an office phone - wasn't useless after all. — Ralph Sassone

Excellent, I think I see a few veela cousins," said George, craning his neck for a better look. "They'll need help understanding our English customs, I'll look after them ... "
"Not so fast, Your Holeyness," said Fred, and darting past the gaggle of middle-aged witches heading the procession, he said, "Here - permettez-moi to assister vous," to a pair of pretty French girls, who giggled and allowed him to escort them inside. George was left to deal with the middle-aged witches. — J.K. Rowling

We all like to think of ourselves as a standard, and I can see that it is genuinely difficult for the English middle class to suppose that the working class is not desperately anxious to become just like itself. I am afraid this must be unlearned. — Raymond Williams

Where is Sin's plaid? (Lochlan)
Plaid cloth is for people of true Scots blood, Lochlan. They are not for half-blooded Sassenachs. (Aisleen)
(He had found Sin later that day, alone in their room. Sin had been sitting in the middle of the floor with his arm cut open while he let blood trail from the wound into a bowl.)
What are you doing? (Lochlan)
I'm trying to get rid of the English blood in me, but it doesn't look any different than yours. How can I make it go away when I can't find the difference? (Sin) — Kinley MacGregor

Until the early middle years of the sixteenth century, when King Henry VIII began to quarrel with Rome about the dialectics of divorce and decapitation, a short and swift route to torture and death was the attempt to print the Bible in English. It's — Christopher Hitchens

Middle-earth is ... not my own invention. It is a modernization or alteration ... of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the oikoumene: middle because thought of vaguely as set amidst the encircling Seas and (in the northern-imagination) between ice of the North and the fire of the South. O. English middan-geard, mediaeval E. midden-erd, middle-erd. Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet! — J.R.R. Tolkien

I think it's part of being English, particularly if you are middle-class - you're always looking to be reminded that you are no good and you are always actually embarrassed about being successful. — Chris Martin

Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, men of science were all believers. Most of the great early English naturalists were also ministers; they were the only ones who had education and leisure for such pursuits. Darwin himself almost became a minister. God's power was always thought to be most easily and obviously revealed in the majestic works of nature. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I can read Middle English stories, Geoffrey Chaucer or Sir Thomas Malory, but once I start moving in the direction of contemporary fantasy, my mind begins to take over. — David Eddings

The English-language press in India supports the project of corporate globalization fully. It has no time for dispossession and drought and farmers' debts, the ravages that the corporate globalization project is wreaking on the poor of India. So to suddenly turn around and condemn the riots is a typical middle-class response. Let's support everything that leads to the conditions in which the massacre takes place, but when the killing starts, you recoil in middle-class horror, and say, Oh, that's not very nice. Can't we be more civilized? — Arundhati Roy

As we have seen, French culture and language interacted with native English culture for several generations after the Norman Conquest. A common word such as 'castle' is a French loan word, for example; and the whole romance tradition comes from the French. But this sensibility, culture, and language becomes integrated with native culture.
As well as the beginnings of what came to be called a courtly love tradition, we can find in Early Middle English (around the time that Layamon was writing Brut) the growth of a local tradition of songs and ballads. — Ronald Carter

I grew up in a middle class English family just outside London. I wasn't surrounded by that speedy city lifestyle, it was a little mellower. — Ed Westwick

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things
like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)
I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.
Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! — Terri Windling

I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria. — John Fowles

I do revel slightly in the fact that I am what I am - an English, middle-class, public-school-educated bloke. There is a reputation with that of being slightly stiff, but whoever gets to know me will see some other element - whether it be vulnerable or silly or camp. — Elliot Cowan

I never felt totally, 100%, patriotically English ... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon, and Damascus, and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London ... Done a fair bit of traveling really. — Andy Serkis

Nobody wants a house in Osaka,' he said, and it was strange to hear him switch suddenly to foreign pronunciation in the middle of his English. 'It would mean you had to live in Osaka.'

'What's wrong with it?'

'It's like . . . Birmingham. — Natasha Pulley

In my mind's eye, the image of bodies dancing quickly fades into the image of a group of men standing in a circle outside a club, trading stories in perfect American English, and then to the awkward silence caused by the sudden appearance of a middle-aged woman in tattered clothes, a baby strapped to her chest, a hand stretched out for loose change. — Bobby Benedicto

For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany that is not our way, and the consequence is that when the German youth or maiden leaves the gymnasium or high school at fifteen, "it" (as in Germany one conveniently may say) can understand and speak the tongue it has been learning. In England we have a method that for obtaining the least possible result at the greatest possible expenditure of time and money is perhaps unequalled. An English boy who has been through a good middle-class school in England can talk to a Frenchman, slowly and with difficulty, about female gardeners and aunts; conversation which, to a man possessed perhaps of neither, is liable to pall. Possibly, — Jerome K. Jerome

Historical grammar is a study of how, say, modern English developed from Middle English, and how that developed from Early and Old English, and how that developed from Germanic, and that developed from what's called Proto-Indo-European, a source system that nobody speaks, so you have to try to reconstruct it. — Noam Chomsky

Writers in what we now call the Middle English period (late twelfth century to 1485) did not necessarily always write in English. The language was in a state of flux: attempts were made to assert the French language, to keep down the local language, English, and to make the language of the church (Latin) the language of writing. — Ronald Carter

School was rough for me. I was a good student in middle school, but high school wasn't so fun. I still pulled through, though! I excelled in art, fashion, history and English literature - anything creative. Math and science I struggled a bit more in. — India De Beaufort

His wife had also studied art in her hometown, and she could paint, but depending on such work for her livelihood was just not possible. As far as appearances went, she was definitely a real beauty. When she was young, she looked a little like Gong Li, but now that she was middle-aged, she had put on weight and gradually taken on more of a bell-shaped look, resembling Li Siqin. But no matter what, a wife always looks better than her balding, broadbellied husband. — Chew Kok Chang

was fascinated by a 9th-century poem by the Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf, whose religious poem Christ included the Old English word for the known inhabited world: middangeard, translated as "Middle-earth." The poem makes reference to a being called Earendal, who is the brightest of angels above Middle-earth and is sent to humans. — Wyatt North

I told the Kid I thought Wednesday was Latin for Satan, and that we probably shouldn't do it then because it might be bad luck. The Kid then proceeded to tell me what the word Wednesday actually means and where it came from (apparently it's Middle English for Wednes dei, the day of the English God Woden
how the hell he knows these things, I'll never know). He then said to stop being such a girl. — T.J. Klune

If you read history you will find that the Christians begin the most for the present world are just the ones that thought the most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot. in the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark one Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so in effective in this. And that Heaven and you'll get the earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you'll get neither. — C.S. Lewis

None of this, of course, was ever stated: the genteel social Darwinism of the English middle classes always remained implicit. — Julian Barnes

Are you asking me out? For a date?" asked Marie. She wasn't surprised. It had happened to her before. She thought David was just another white guy who wanted to rebel against his white middle-class childhood by dating a brown woman. He wouldn't have been the first white guy to do such a thing. She had watched quite a few white guys pursue brown female students, especially Asian nationals, with a missionary passion. Co to college, find a cute minority woman, preferably one with limited English, and colonize her by sleeping with her. — Sherman Alexie

Mansoor had seen Vikas Uncle's movies before and had never cared for them. They were serious, stiff, shot in black-and-white, the characters speaking crisp English. Nothing good happened to anyone. People lived enclosed middle-class lives, taunting each other with petty memories, and women and men argued incessantly. "They're so joyless," he had told his mother, wondering at how tragic Vikas Uncle's sensibility had been even before the blast - it was as if he were sitting at a ceremonial fire, fanning a tragedy toward himself. "But they are very acclaimed," his mother had said reverently. — Karan Mahajan

Soon we're both frowning hard at the paperwork. "Middle name?" Noah says. "Does Gideon even have a middle name?"
"I don't know"
Noah turns to me and says, "Do you have a middle name?" his glare implying that, if I do, this whole thing is somehow my fault.
"I ... have no idea."
"Primary language spoken at home." Noah makes a face. "What does this mean? Our primary language? Gideon's? That's sort of why we're here ... "
"Um, it's under family, so I'm guessing ours?"
"Well ... " Noah lowers his pen. The paperwork has defeated him. "What's our primary language?"
"English? ASL? Physical affection?"
"Food?" Noah says.
"Food's a good guess."
He picks up the pen. "I'm writing food, comma passive aggressive."
"Good call. — Hannah Moskowitz

Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country. — Aravind Adiga

Clutter is stuck energy. The word "clutter" derives from the Middle English word "clotter," which means to coagulate - and that's about as stuck as you can get. — Karen Kingston

A dash derives from "to dash," to shatter, strike violently, to throw suddenly or violently, hence to throw carelessly in or on, hence to write carelessly or suddenly, to add or insert suddenly or carelessly to or in the page. "To dash" comes from Middle English daschen, itself probably from Scandinavian-compare Danish daske, to beat, to strike. Ultimately the word is-rather obviously-echoic. — Eric Partridge

Aomame knew that he worked for a corporation connected with oil. He was a specialist on capital investment in a number of Middle Eastern countries. According to the information she had been given, he was one of the more capable men in the field. She could see it in the way he carried himself. He came from a good family, earned a sizable income, and drove a new Jaguar. After a pampered childhood, he had gone to study abroad, spoke good English and French, and exuded self-confidence. He was the type who could not bear to be told what to do, or to be criticized, especially if the criticism came from a woman. He had no difficulty bossing others around, though, and cracking a few of his wife's ribs with a golf club was no problem at all. As far as he was concerned, the world revolved around him, and without him the earth didn't move at all. He could become furious - violently angry - if anyone interfered with what he was doing or contradicted him in any way. — Haruki Murakami

One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household, but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London, was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was possible. — Daniel Day-Lewis

I'm working on this book on the trial of Socrates. It started out with the idea of the problem of freedom of thought...and expression...I started by spending a year on the English Seventeenth Century Revolutions, and I had a fascinating time. And then I felt I couldn't understand the English Seventeenth Century Revolutions without understanding the Reformation. When I got to the Reformation, I felt that I had to understand the premonitory movements that began in the Middle Ages. When I got there, I felt I had to understand the classical period." (quoted in Andrew Patner, I. F. Stone: A Portrait, p. 21) — I. F. Stone