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 a luxury to be understood.

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

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

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.

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests. 

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.