“Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?”

“In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?”

“I know why the Jews and Muslims have nine hundred names for God; one small word is not enough for love.”

“The word "dreadful," even when used three times in a row, did not seem like a dreadful enough word to describe everything that had happened.”

“Look, words are like the air: they belong to everybody. Words are not the problem; it's the tone, the context, where those words are aimed, and in whose company they are uttered. Of course murderers and victims use the same words, but I never read the words utopia, or beauty, or tenderness in police descriptions. Do you know that the Argentinean dictatorship burnt The Little Prince ? And I think they were right to do so, not because I do not love The Little Prince , but because the book is so full of tenderness that it would harm any dictatorship.”

“Mr. Sinclair once asked the class to make a list of the ten most beautiful words in the English language, and the only word that really seemed beautiful to me was tenderness.”