Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.