Language achieves soul only when it's applied as a tool, used by those who imbue it with what they have had the courage and honesty to perceive and feel.

The last motive in the world for acquiring vocabulary should be to impress. Words should be acquired because we urgently need them -- to convey, to reach, to express something within us, and to understand others.

Words are contact with other beings. I see a word that says something I've noticed, seen, felt, obserevd, and I capture it; "I need that word!"

Once an editor chased after me, red lights, siren, trying to write me a ticket because I made up a word, but poetic license is irrevocable.

The illusion is we are only physical.

What a gulf between impression and expression! That’s our ironic fate—to have Shakespearean feelings and (unless by some billion-to-one chance we happen to be Shakespeare) to talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors. We practice alchemy in reverse—touch gold and it turns into lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash.