Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly--they'll go through anything. You read and you're peirced.

Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.

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.

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.