Top 100 Right Word Quotes
#1. I need to know how many men ... " I glanced at the door. "How many men Brant has ... " I tried to find the right word to use in this public setting. " ... been in contact with. If Lee is the only one. What the possibilities are for more.
Alessandra Torre
#2. I met Steve McQueen once. Well, met isn't really the right word.
Griffin Dunne
#3. Which was better: being alive (if that was the right word) but not remembering anything, or being dead?
Laurie Halse Anderson
#4. Because he's just so, so," Peter paused looking for the right word, "so French!
Jack Lewis Baillot
#5. All these questions about do you want to be king? It's not a question of wanting to be, it's something I was born into and it's my duty ... Wanting is not the right word. But those stories about me not wanting to be king are all wrong.
Prince William
#6. God sends people into our lives just when we need them, to say the right word, His word, just when we need it.
W. A. Criswell
#7. As for those whose role it is to love us - I mean, relatives and in-laws (what a word)- It's a different tune. They find the right word, but it's usually the one that wounds.
Albert Camus
#8. There are many ways to go about a story. And if you give yourself some formal constraints, it just makes the job so much - maybe 'easier' isn't the right word, but because you know your boundaries, you can just play within those boundaries much more, so it's much more fun to do.
Samantha Harvey
#9. seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins
Robert Louis Stevenson
#10. I love you. Still not the right word, but i know you want to hear it.
Sylvia Day
#11. I don't know if proud is the right word, but I am somebody who does not, on the whole, have the highest regard for my own stuff in that when I look all I get to see are the flaws.
Neil Gaiman
#12. I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.
A.E. Housman
#13. It's rude to not try and look up-to-date. Is rude the right word? Yes! It's rude - rude to other people.
Nicholas Haslam
#14. That's the one thing about here, the South, you've missed. You'd be amazed if you knew how many people are on your side, if side's the right word. You're no special case. The woods are full of people like you, but we need some more of you. She
Harper Lee
#15. I think one of the best things you can do is write really sad songs that touch some semblance of ... I guess 'hope' is the right word?
Eric Bachmann
#16. I guess "rut" isn't the right word. A rut is something you subconsciously want to get out of. The thing is, when I admitted it to myself, I was happy. Happy happy happy. And that's a good thing.
Sean Kennedy
#17. Dan's voice was rough and low as he murmured against Vadim's lips. 'I hate you, Russkie.' No. He didn't, but he couldn't find the right word for this. This feeling. Hatred was the closest he could get. The alternative was still unthinkable.
Aleksandr Voinov
#18. Insane was probably the right word, but Clawdeen preferred determined.
Lisi Harrison
#19. Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.
Franz Kafka
#20. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
Neil Gaiman
#21. There is a pause, while she turns the great pages of her volume of rage, and puts her finger on just the right word.
Hilary Mantel
#22. I found I'm quite happy working on a sentence for an hour or more, searching for the right phrase, the right word. I compare it to the work of a stone cutter - chipping away at the raw material until it's just right, or as right as you can get it.
Harriet Doerr
#23. Writers are the people who are most awkward with words. Their whole life revolves around one right word.
Saket Suryesh
#24. I can't even think of the right word, but it's not "help." It's more like a prerequisite. I think connection is why we're here, it's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and belonging is in our DNA. And so "tribe" and "belonging" are irreducible needs, like love.
Brene Brown
#25. A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory ... dictiona ries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it.
Rumer Godden
#26. And the Bastard grant us ... in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#27. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and a lightening bug.
Mark Twain
Nancy Oswald
#28. A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain.
Mark Twain
#30. I feel like every role you take, there's a part of you that obviously feels like you can do it. I don't know if perfect is the right word because I don't believe in perfection. I don't think it exists.
Mila Kunis
#31. For you born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word"
- Catherine Drinker Bowen
Yvonne Finn
#32. And then there's silence. Though is silence the right word when, through the quiet, the air is so charged, electricity crackles deafeningly without making a sound?
Riley Edgewood
#33. When I go to bed at night, I ask God to give me another day; I ask him to keep me strong and make me a good teacher and to keep spreading this right word.
Richard Simmons
#34. I feel like every role that you take there's a part of you that obviously feels like you can do it. I don't know if perfect is the right word because I don't believe in perfection and I don't think it exists but I think striving to do something well is in every single part.
Mila Kunis
#35. I sing what I sing. And that's recitals and orchestra concerts. To appease - no, that's not the right word - let's say to satisfy - any opera urgings that my public has, I'll put in an aria.
Kathleen Battle
#36. Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could - I'm searching for the right word - could, could die.
Steve Jobs
#37. Never underestimate the power of one well-timed compliment. It has the power to change a person's entire perspective on life. It has the potential to change a person's plotline for eternity. The right word at the right time can be the catalyst for someone else's miracle.
Mark Batterson
#38. If progress is not the right word for buildings or poems, what is the right way to evaluate cultural change? I suggest integrity.
Andy Crouch
#39. Using lots of fresh foods, fruits and vegetables, helps to keep the menu buoyant - I don't know if that's the right word, but it keeps a balance of freshness and health.
Sally Schneider
#40. among a soft folk obsessed with words, choosing the right word is nearly as important as doing the right thing." The
Brian Staveley
#41. People in power have to be careful about what comes out of their mouth. They have to find exactly the right word that can't be attacked.
Anna Deavere Smith
#42. Was that all my love was, all it meant? So light, so easily gone and forgotten? Is solace that simple? And solace is not even the right word: I'm happy.
Pauline Reage
#43. He knew there were some who said that those who kept dogs had to resign themselves to their eventual loss because of the animals' relatively short lives. The trick - if "trick" was the right word - was to learn to love the spirit of the animal, and to recognize that it transferred itself from dog to
John Connolly
#44. I never really thought about myself being in really big movies at all. In fact, I always though I'd do, I don't know, smaller movies is not quite the right word, but more character-oriented, dramatic things. I took myself a little bit seriously.
Chris Pine
#45. It takes two races to mongrelize a race - if that's the right word - and when we white people holler about mongrelizin', isn't that something of a reflection on ourselves as a race?
Harper Lee
#46. But that was just it - hate was exactly the right word. Hate is a force of attraction. Hate is just love with its back turned.
Terry Pratchett
#47. Love might not be the right word. I live you in every breath and every heartbeat.
Namrata
#48. I like playing around with the words; I love it when I feel like I've picked the exact right word to describe whatever it is I'm trying to describe.
Margaret Haddix
#49. Aren't you, uh ... " Clary searched for the right word. "Reproducing?
Cassandra Clare
#50. The Anglo-Saxons had a great word for the right word, the word that you need right now, when another one simply would not do. That word is wordriht.
Douglas Wilson
#51. I just like the feeling of finding the right word in my mind and employing it. I get pleasure from that feeling. I prefer language to gesture. I figured other people might, too.
Aimee Bender
#52. It will startle you to see what slaves we are to by-gone times-to Death, if we give the matter the right word! ... We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos! ... Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#54. Literature isn't necessarily pleasant,' he said.
'But it is!' Lambert said. 'Even things that are sad become pleasant when they are done artistically.' He hesitated. 'Maybe pleasant isn't exactly the right word, but it'll do.
Simone De Beauvoir
#55. The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
Mark Twain
#56. As a driver I have come to believe that the person just in front of me and the person just behind me are always just about to do something really stupid. Tense is not the right word, but I am very hyper-aware of such things.
Jonathan Meades
#57. It means that, in fact, it's - whether fascist is the right word I don't know - more of a plutocracy than anything resembling a democracy; it has become a nation controlled by a very small, very wealthy elite.
Peter Singer
#58. 'Pigeonholed' isn't the right word, because I feel like I've had a very wide range of characters that I've been allowed to play.
Lance Reddick
#59. 'Madame Bovary' advanced slowly, as slowly as it would have to have, given an author who held himself accountable to each word, that it be the right word, of which there could be only one.
Kathryn Harrison
#60. You know, I think it's important to keep a balance in things. Yeah, balance, that's the right word. Cause the guy who wants too much risks losing absolutely everything. Of course, the one who wants too little from life, might not get anything at all.
Thomas Angelo
#61. Tonight, it's - the is like
" I searched for the right word to encapsulate how it made me feel, how beautiful it was. "Lying here and looking up at the stars like this, it makes me feel like I'm lying on a planet. It's so wide. So infinite.
Jenny Han
#62. Oh, 'impressed' is not the right word! Treading the soil of the moon gives one, I imagine (or rather my projected self imagines), the most remarkable romantic thrill ever experienced in the history of discovery.
Vladimir Nabokov
#63. Fun wouldn't be the right word ... it was the most difficult, challenging, physical, extraordinary stretch I've ever had to make, in all those wild regards.
Uma Thurman
#64. As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:
genuine clarity
genuine feeling
the right word
the exact English sentence
the eloquent detail
the rigorous dramatization of story
Richard Yates
#65. Who says reading should be easy? Shouldn't it challenge you as hard sometimes as love. Maybe "hard" is not the right word in this context. Ha!
Hilton Als
#66. Why can't a photograph be all four things at once? -be an art object; be a document, what ever that means exactly, but deal with content; be a formalist exploration; and operate on some, metaphor is not the right word but, resonant level..
Stephen Shore
#67. I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.
Peter Orner
#68. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
Mark Twain
#69. Antipathies, I think
' (she was rather glad there WAS no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) '
but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?
Lewis Carroll
#70. Style means the right word. The rest matters little.
Jules Renard
#71. It is true that we Russians have sent only four doctors into space in forty years of flight, but still I might have had chance to fly to Mir or International Space Station except for one fact. This is that I cannot urinate - is this the right word, Mr. Roth? - I cannot urinate on wheel of bus.
Dan Simmons
#72. She might be a natural-born cynic, but she knew the right word when she heard it.
Kate DiCamillo
#73. Well, it's not really the right word, but freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more of it.
Penn Jillette
#74. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word ...
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#75. They went into stores to get food to stay alive. Looting isn't the right word. I call it survival.
Russel Honore
#76. The difference between finding the right word as opposed to accepting the almost right word was the difference between being struck by lightning and merely watching a lightning display.
Dan Simmons
#77. The right word at the right time helps you make sense of the world. It helps, but sometimes not a lot.
Chris Lynch
#78. I have now reached the happy age of 23. No, happy is not quite the right word. At this particular moment I am certainly not happy.
Eva Braun
#79. Mark Twain said, 'The right word is to the nearly right word as lightning is to the lightning bug.' Fill your book with lightning.
Robert Littell
#80. I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it.
Saul Bellow
#81. Edda danced in the ballet. That was her job. 'Job' was not the word other people chose to describe what Edda did, but the right word nonetheless. Words were queer that way, Edda often thought. They classified things. In her case they could place someone in another dimension.
Brooke McEldowney
#82. Mark Twain once put it, "The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Power
Saul D. Alinsky
#83. I would try to find joy despite the necessary work of grieving, and I knew full well that work was exactly the right word to describe it. It was John's life that was over, not mine.
Elizabeth Berg
#84. Fill your pages with details. Work hard to get the right word.
Robert Littell
#85. Even though it was beautiful and comfortable, and even though it was the world, it was also a little bit boring.
No, wait. Maybe boring isn't the right word. What's the word I'm wanting here? Lonely. That's it. It was a little bit lonely.
Catherine Ryan Hyde
#86. You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense ... Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
Joseph Conrad
#87. Cecil flashed a grin. "Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your, ah ... " Cecil paused, apparently groping again for just the right word.
"Equals?" Miles hazarded.
"Cattle," Cecil corrected judiciously.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#88. A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt ...
Mark Twain
#89. Set foot on the campus and it changes you forever. It's ... "
He paused like he was searching for the right word, something I'd never seen him do before."
"It's Nerdvana!" he finally declared.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#90. There is a third quality to friendship, and it is not as easy to put into a single word. The right word, literally, is "sympathy" - sym-pathos, common passion. This means that friendships are discovered more than they are created at will.
Timothy Keller
#91. Perfection is the absolute right word. And you could never ruin it," she said in a low, calm voice. "Not when it was perfect because of you.
Laura Kaye
#92. And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.
Dorothy Parker
#93. I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.
Steve Martin
#94. The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.
George Eliot
#95. Magic, if that was the right word, often rises and falls on your own belief in your abilities. I've seen very powerful people completely crippled by self-doubt.
Laurell K. Hamilton
#96. For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.
Catherine Drinker Bowen
#97. And pretty is not even the right word. She burns. She's a verb.
Max Gladstone
#98. I think you can get to a point where nihilism, if that's the right word, is overwhelming, and the basic laws that society has set up - either religious or social laws - become meaningless.
Bruce Springsteen
#99. She's pretty in a way that distracts me just like she did in the Skiz ring. No, pretty's not the right word. Beautiful.
Marie Lu
#100. Mark Twain once opined in his homey way: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
Dan Simmons
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
