Wordplay Quotes & Sayings

(Media question to Beatles during first U.S. tour 1964)
"How do you find America?"
"Turn left at Greenland. — Ringo Starr

Between cold war and hot peace, our love got sterilized to death. — Natalya Vorobyova

Arthur: If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it?
Ford: We're safe.
Arthur: Oh good.
Ford: We're in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.
Arthur: Ah, this is obviously some strange use of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of. — Douglas Adams

She pursued his lips,' Zach laughs. 'Another one I misread! Pursued for "pursed." You know. She pursed her lips. So whenever you do that now, reach out and touch my lips to shut me up? I think, she pursued his lips.'

'That's so silly,' smiles Rachel.

'I know that. Now I'm pursuing your lips,' he adds.

When Zach kisses her, Rachel is often aware of the pulse in his lower labial, a small heartbeat there. She is aware of a pulsing and a slight thickening of tissue. How many times has this boy bled from his mouth? How many times. — Emma Richler

If only Uncle Monty knew what we know," Violet said, "and Stephano knew that he knew what we know. But Uncle Monty doesn't know what we know, and Stephano knows that he doesn't know what we know."
"I know," Klause said.
"I know you know," Violet said — Lemony Snicket

You go back to those films of the '40s and '50s and hear the dialogue, the way the people played off each other - the wordplay. I think we've really lost that in movies. — Clive Owen

Though I be but the prince of Wales, yet I am king of courtesy — William Shakespeare

Easily found, easily gathered, lives were the small change of this world, and if you lost a few, it didn't matter; there were always more. — Salman Rushdie

Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Are we absolutely certain that Becky Albertalli didn't just steal the diary of a hilariously observant teenage boy? Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda is a pitch-perfect triumph of wit and wordplay that feels timelessly, effortlessly now. — Tim Federle

Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks. — Barbara Kingsolver

Writing is making love under a crescent moon: I see shadows of what's to come, and it's enough; I have faith in what I can't see and it's substantiated by a beginning, a climax, an ending. And if it's an epic novel in hand, I watch the sunrise amid the twigs and dewing grass; the wordplay is what matters.
Simply put, I'm in love, and any inconvenience is merely an afterthought.
The sun tips the horizon; the manuscript is complete. The author, full of profound exhaustion, lays his stylus aside. His labor of love stretches before him, beautiful, content, sleeping, until the next crescent moon stars the evening sky. — Chila Woychik

The reality is that dying isn't bad, but it takes forever. And that forever is no time at all. I know that sounds like a contradiction, or maybe just wordplay. What it really is, it turns out, is a matter of perspective.
- David Foster Wallace "Good Old Neon" (2004) — David Foster Wallace

And there's wordplay and there's rhythms and you have to be able to get the poetry out of it. You have to be able to sell my jokes. And if you're talking about somebody like Sam Jackson, they do that. Sam Jackson can do that. Sam Jackson can turn it into the spoken word that it was always meant to be and he can sell my jokes. And Christopher Walken can do it and a lot of people can do it, all right. — Quentin Tarantino

Quite a lot is a large amount but quite a few is also a large amount. — Teresa Monachino

Why is abbreviation such a long word? — Teresa Monachino

It was not that he was feckless, more that he had simply not been around the day they handed out feck. — Neil Gaiman

I tend to throw tantrums a lot. Wear a helmet in my presence. — Natalya Vorobyova

It pleases him how Spell is how the word is made but also, in the hands of the magician, how the world is changed. One letter separates Word from World, and that letter is like the number one, or an 'I', or a shaft of light between almost closed curtains. There is an old letter called a thorn, which jags and tears at the throat as it's uttered. Later he learns that Grammar and Glamour share the same deeper root, which is further magic, and there can be neither magic without that root, nor plant. He's lost in it like Chid in Child, or God reversed into Dog. Somewhere inside him is a colon. A sentence can last for life. — Charles Lambert

I put the bra in brand, and I top it! — Natalya Vorobyova

Poststructuralism ... is a form of literary criticism that uses elaborate wordplay to prove its central premise, that all language is internally contradictory and has no fixed meaning. — Naomi Wolf

When I pass the bar, you'll be barred from bars but put behind them. — Natalya Vorobyova

When you find yourself writing, reading, or listening the delivery of words when spoken? You know the melody of wordplay. "& I love Wordplay — Elijah Cainaan

Now me," said Mr. Vandemar.
"What number am I thinking of?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"What number am I thinking of?" repeated Mr. Vandemar. "It's between one and a lot," he added, helpfully. — Neil Gaiman

Justice has to be cold. Deal with it; it's just ice. — Natalya Vorobyova

Perhaps you'd care for a synonym bun, suggested the duke. — Norton Juster

You know how there are words that never really - they are never really quite right. You can't quite trust them. Use them. You know. Without pause.'

'There are words I stare at,' Zach says. 'Strange. Every time. Misled, that's one. I see mizzled. And unshed. I read unched.'

'Me too! But that's a different thing - except, now you mention it, it's odd about unshed, that it's only for tears. Mostly. Hardly ever blood, for instance, you don't see unshed blood. Unched. Not really.'

'Not in my case anyway. Mine sheds all over the joint! I'm a bleeder all right. — Emma Richler

Graham's life is as tense as an overstretched simile. — Zane Stumpo

Yes, I think he even has a title. He's like son and heir.'

I turned her words over in my mind as I pretended to play with my phone.

Sun and hair
Son and heir
Sun and air — Olivia Sudjic

Ena milo melomon, frai is frau and swee is too, swee is two when swoo is free, ana mala woe is we! — James Joyce

She wandered off into the shadows, carrying her bucket and dragging her shadow like a bridal veil. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Why it's simply impassible!
Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible! — Lewis Carroll

In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process. — Matthea Harvey

The city is tricky. The highs are so much higher, but in the lows you drop straight down again to bedrock. It helps that streets are snapped to a grid. There are also psychic boutiques and sidewalk prophets, but until you contrive your own love story set in that city, even one as warped as mine, you remain outside it, looking for signals in the white smoke that rises from under, in the sudden hot laundry smells and the LED typos of street vendors donuteasily becomes dount, ominously like don't, to my mind. There was a DOUNT sign on Second Avenue which more than once redirected my superstitious footsteps. — Olivia Sudjic

This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.
[Women Know Everything!] — Dorothy Parker

In his book, Samuelson grabs hold of Smith's wordplay and freebases meaning from it until a mere metaphor mutates into the economic doctrine that would define the shape and form of global finance for the remainder of the century, and beyond. — Anonymous

Scully was appallingly gregarious - so outgoing she was practically incoming. — Karen Joy Fowler

Argentina. The word itself had lost little of its power to startle and had, due to my ignorance of the physical place it occupied on the globe, assumed a peculiar life of its own. There was the harsh Ar at the beginning, which called up gold, idols, lost cities in the jungle, which in turn led to the hushed and sinister chamber of Gen, with the bright, interrogative Tina at the end - all nonsense, of course, but then it seemed in some muddled way that name itself, one of the few concrete facts available to me, might itself be a cryptogram or clue. — Donna Tartt

I think every writer has a book that haunts them, and on some level, every book you write is a reaction to it. 'Lolita' is that book for me. Nabokov's love of wordplay, descriptive detail, artfully complex plots, and his themes of obsession and lost love, are inspiring. — Marisha Pessl

Tao is obscured when men understand only one pair of opposites, or concentrate only on a partial aspect of being. Then clear expression also becomes muddled by mere wordplay, affirming this one aspect and denying all the rest. The pivot of Tao passes through the center where all affirmations and denials converge. He who grasps the pivot is at the still-point from which all movements and oppositions can be seen in their right relationship ... Abandoning all thought of imposing a limit or taking sides, he rests in direct intuition. — Zhuangzi

Leave your incidental Dick. — Vladimir Nabokov

He: "Whale you be my valentine?" She: "Dolphinitely. — Adam Young

Loser lit antiheroes aren't well intentioned or earnest; they don't care whether you like them or not. They're self-mocking, ironic and inventive; they narrate their downfalls with manic wordplay, rampant metaphors, wisecracks, and escalating flights of spleen-fueled lyricism. — Kate Christensen

It occurred to the man that the biggest problem with this staid world was the overwhelming demand for conformity. Everything was so eerily definitive: assent to the mandates of society would see you on the rise, but dissent was a steady downward path. — Django Wylie

I loved Monty Python for the wordplay
this sense that you didn't have to squash your intelligence to be funny. In fact, you could walk right into your intelligence and nerdiness and self-doubt, and that could be funny. — George Saunders

I can be really silly when I'm not actually writing silliness, and I have to rein that in. Pynchon, in my opinion, sometimes tells elaborate shaggy dog stories just to work up to a pun or punch line. My challenge is to use humor and wordplay to reinforce the emotional core of the novel. — Mary Kay Zuravleff

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire. — George Bernard Shaw

Love flies out the door when money comes innuendo. — Groucho Marx

I'm just like any other person you can meet and greet on the street and like or not like. I'm not Holden or Humbert. You can really touch me! If you don't believe me, come to Aristod right now. Come hold and hump me! — Brian Celio

tomorrow's gone-we'll have tonight! — Dorothy Parker

Brevity is the soul of lingerie. — Dorothy Parker

One of my favourite things about country music is that, at least until recently, you could always count on a solid story, a punchline and a pun. I think it has that in common with hip hop, where they're not afraid of wordplay and I really appreciate that. — St. Vincent

I am not a slow writer, I am not a fast writer ... I am a half-fast writer. — Robert Asprin

War?' The word held too much definition for three letters. — Shannon A. Thompson

She jotted down the order, then forced herself to meet his gaze. "It's going to be a bit of a wait, we're short-staffed this morning." The following words rushed out of her. "And breakfast's on me."
"Normally, I wouldn't protest," he said, leaning closer. "But in public, I'd prefer a plate."
An image of Rukh, hair untied, licking whipped cream off her navel flashed through her mind, left her staring. — Mina Khan

The spirit of tanka interests me more than following rigid conventions. As I understand it, the tradition allows a variety of approaches, from simple description and heartfelt expression to classical allusion and evocative wordplay. Succeeding generations rediscover and renew the form so that it retains its vitality. — Harryette Mullen

Don't look at me in that tone of voice. — Dorothy Parker

Mr. Wodehouse is a prose stylist of such startling talent that Frankie nearly skipped around with glee when she first read some of his phrases. Until her discovery of Something Fresh on the top shelf of Ruth's bookshelf one bored summer morning, Frankie's leisure reading had consister primarily of paperback mysteries she found on the spinning racks at the public library down the block from her house, and the short stories of Dorothy Parker. Wodehouse's jubilant wordplay bore itself into her synapses like a worm into a fresh ear of corn. — E. Lockhart

What a funny watch!' she remarked. 'It tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell
what o'clock it is!'
'Why should it?' muttered the Hatter. 'Does YOUR watch tell you what year it is?'
'Of course not,' Alice replied very readily: 'but that's because it stays the same year for such a long time together.'
'Which is just the case with MINE,' said the Hatter. — Lewis Carroll

The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish. — Sara Sheridan

Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word. — Julio Cortazar

Tell him I was too fucking busy-- or vice versa. — Dorothy Parker

Beware the ideas of March... just one little letter changes the whole meaning. I love the way worms can do that. — Alan Dapre

Everyone lives in two worlds," Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studied her letters. "There's the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that aren't. Mostly the real world s-s-s-suh-sucks. But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head. An inscape, a world of thought. In a world made of thought - in an inscape - every idea is a fact. Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history. Creative people, like writers, and Henry Rollins, spend a lot of their time hanging out in their thoughtworld. S-s-strong creatives, though, can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together. Your bike. My tiles. Those are our knives. — Joe Hill

There was no Lo to behold. — Vladimir Nabokov

Our cadaverous cadre has been walking for little over a day ... — Isaac Marion

Writing about sex is a challenge for the same reason sex is a challenge. Because it's complicated. Because it doesn't always make sense and it isn't always perfect and it's sometimes awful and it's sometimes hilarious. But underneath all the clever wordplay, it's about hope. Hope that someone will see us, and accept us, and perhaps - after all that - choose us. It's the barest we will ever be. The barest a character will ever be. That's why it's difficult.
As for what makes a good sex scene, a romance novelist would have told you that when done well and with a skilled hand, the best sex scenes can at once arouse and empower. Sex on the page gives readers the freedom to explore their own sexuality, their own pleasures, their own identities. With hope. And without judgment. — Sarah MacLean

Martin had a period of relishing the Boston thug-writer George V. Higgins, author of The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Higgins's characters had an infectious way of saying 'inna' and 'onna,' so Martin would say, for example, 'I think this lunch should be onna Hitch' or 'I heard he wasn't that useful inna sack.' Simple pleasures you may say, but linguistic sinew is acquired in this fashion and he would not dump a trope until he had chewed all the flesh and pulp of it and was left only with pith and pips. Thus there arrived a day when Park Lane played host to a fancy new American hotel with the no less fancy name of 'The Inn on The Park' and he suggested a high-priced cocktail there for no better reason than that he could instruct the cab driver to 'park inna Inn onna Park.' This near-palindrome (as I now think of it) gave us much innocent pleasure. — Christopher Hitchens

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them. — Dorothy Parker

And spare me the jokes about scoring."
"Dammit, woman, you read my mind," he said. "Is there no filthy wordplay you can't forsee?"
"It's my special magical power. I can read your mind when you're thinking dirty thoughts."
"So, ninety-five percent of the time. — Cassandra Clare

The English probably do that wordplay kind of humour and whimsy better than anyone, and I've always felt that my writing goes more to that than what I did when I came to Australia. — Graeme Base

I think a man's "wordplay" can be so fucking sexy!!! I love a good mind fuck!! — Junnita Jackson

Prices of semicolons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty points off the TomJones Index. — Jasper Fforde

A year later, there is another miscarriage, another lost boy, and then an operation, and Rachel is in a muddle. Another missed carriage, she hears, conjuring a vision of Mama in a typical dash from the house, hurrying for trains to other cities where she will conduct music and choirs. Rachel sees Katya on a railway platform, suitcase and baton box in hand, but Mama is too late, the train hurtles by, screaming through the arches, a great train of missed carriages. Rachel's night-time wish is granted then, that though Katya has left her once again, she must return home as quickly. She has missed her carriage.

'Mama,' Rachel whispers into the night bedroom air, 'Mama, hurry home! — Emma Richler

Assassins: they got sass and live on sin. — Natalya Vorobyova

Big Rube was on my first album and some of my mixtapes. His words are so powerful. I want to speak every word he says into existence. I wanna be a part of that! I wanna be a part of greatness. His wordplay is great to me. — Nayvadius Cash

I love astute observations and really great wordplay. I love the way that Louis C.K. observes life, and I love the way Patton Oswalt talks about it. — Greg Behrendt

I have some things that I've been workin' on, such as delivery, wordplay, breath control, just a lot of other things that artists work on, that the listener may not be listening for. — Joe Budden

Look after the senses and the sounds will look after themselves — Lewis Carroll

Noses run. Feet smell. — Teresa Monachino

Letters orchestrated into a song of words create the symphony of a novel. — Leslie Austin

There are four on whose pots the Holy One, blessed he, knocked, only to find them filled with piss, and these are they: Adam, Cain, the wicked Balaam, and Hezekiah.
Again, an abrupt transposition from the divine to the domestic, from upper to lowly spheres, occurs in the midrash. The homely image of the Holy One knocking on pots apparently derives from the practice of tapping on a clay or earthen pot to hear its ring in order to decide if it is worthy of holding wine. In current Hebrew usage, the expression 'to assess or gauge someone's pot' still denotes taking in the measure of a person's character. From Adam's answer to God, we learn that he turned out to be a pisspot. — Shuli Barzilai

Oh, I'm dying,' I like moaned. 'Oh, I have a ghastly pain in my side. Appendicitis, it is. Ooooooh.' 'Appendy shitehouse,' grumbled this veck. — Anthony Burgess

You already made your point," I say with a mouthful of fruit.
"Did I?"
"Oh, for the love of dick, yes. Now leave me alone."
"Never. If you want, I'll fuck you now."
The gall. I wouldn't fuck him now if my clit was on fire and needed to be doused with nub-saving cum. I roll my eyes at him.
"No thanks, we have a lifetime of fucking ahead of us," I say mockingly.
He shrugs and starts to walk away as if it makes no difference to him one way or the other. He's such a jackass sometimes. Before I can stop myself I throw my half-eaten banana at him and it hits him on the back of his neck.
He spins around, wipes his neck and looks down at the banana on the floor.
"Did you really just fruitally assault me?"
He thinks he's so damned funny with his wordplay. — Ella Dominguez

Save your explanations, I got some questions for you first and you'd better answer them!' [slurred Hellian.]
'With what?' [Banaschar] sneered. 'Explanations?'
'No. Answers. There's a difference-'
'Really? How? What difference?'
'Explanations are what people use when they need to lie. Y'can always tell those,'cause those don't explain nothing and then they look at you like they just cleared things up when really they did the opposite and they know it and you know it and they know you know and you know they know that you know and they know you and you know them and maybe you go out for a pitcher later but who picks up the tab? That's what I want to know.'
'Right, and answers?'
'Answers is what I get when I ask questions. Answers is when you got no choice. I ask, you tell. I ask again, you tell some more. Then I break your fingers, 'cause I don't like what you're telling me, because those answers don't explain nothing! — Steven Erikson

Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five. — Benjamin Franklin

Though this child came in with nothing but excess baby fat, chemical brain waves, and mother and son bodily toxins on his legs, he had a fate fit for a modern day demigod. — David Scheier

One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand — Novalis

I probably spent more time listening to albums than writing songs. But I think that gave me all the tricks in terms of wordplay, from how I pronounced my words to the actual delivery. — Kendrick Lamar

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. — Mark Twain

Nothing risque, nothing gained. — Alexander Woollcott

I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse. — Woody Allen

He finds himself bored by the shenanigans of highly spirited young men. Their concerns reside somewhere between balder and dash. — Sara Sheridan

The Bibbidi Bobbidi Beautiful boutique, the name filled me with dread. — Jessica Fortunato

Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts comes through better in a play of words, then the wordplay is good. One must know how to enter the ideas of others and how to leave them. — Joseph Joubert

Having something worth telling and a passion to tell it are what make you a good writer. I can't tell you how many times I've read novels or articles that used complicated words and witty wordplay to cover up the fact that they had absolutely no story to tell. A good story should be enjoyed; sometimes simplicity can go a long way. — Chris Colfer

We rarely get the chance to see things anew. I remember a Latin translation that caused me to fail an exam at school because one of the words, translated for us at the bottom of the page and intended to help, was invalid. I read this to mean false, null, illegal. The opposite of valid. But it was meant to be understood as invalid as in a sick person. It torpedoed my entire translation. Instead of tending to the sick, priests were being accused of fraudulence and neglecting their duties. Even though it didn't match up with the grammar, or the story, I kept on returning to that word to check, and every time I saw it only as I had done already - invalid, null, void. — Olivia Sudjic

Carrot, to whom the word irony meant something to do with metal, picked up his pike and after a couple of impressive rebounds managed to cut the cake into approximately four slices. — Terry Pratchett

Ducking for apples
change one letter and it's the story of my life. — Dorothy Parker

It took my whole life to buy this stuff. — Chuck Palahniuk