“What language was that?” I said to Melanie.
“He makes it up,” she said. “He likes the effect of subtitles. In his book, The Flickering, he says that under our ordinary speech there are always invisible subtitles in an unknown tongue.” ……….Russel Hoban, The Medusa Frequency
Viola: Thy reason, man? Feste: Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words; and words are grown so false, I am loath to prove reason with them. ……….Twelfth Night, III.i.25ff
As a rule, however, theoretical controversy is unfruitful. No sooner has one begun to depart from the material on which one ought to be relying, than one runs the risk of becoming intoxicated with one’s own assertions and, in the end, of supporting opinions which any observation would have contradicted. For this reason it seems to me to be incomparably more useful to combat dissentient interpretations by testing them upon particular cases and problems. ……….Sigmund Freud, The History of an Infantile Neurosis
George: Or rather, the words betray the thoughts they are supposed to express. Even the most generalized truth begins to look like special pleading as soon as you trap it in language. ……….Tom Stoppard, Jumpers
I know what I said, and I did not say that. ……….Hank Williams, Jr., “Big Mamou”
The Strangeness of Allegory 