Words about words.

“Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.”

“A word after a word after a word is power.”

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

“Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.”

“Words are but the signs of ideas.”

“The word is now a virus.”

“Language is also a place of struggle.”

“A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.”

“Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations—naturally.”

“Words are events, they do things, change things.”

“You don’t ever really have the language to describe something in a way that makes complete sense.”

“Somehow the activity of writing changes everything. Or appears to do so.”

“Writers breathe air into English and keep it lively by making it their own.”

“I wrote words to fit with the rhythms.”

“The minute you start putting words on paper you’re eliminating possibilities.”

“All writing, for me, is a relationship.”

“When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.”

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

“A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.”

“Your silence will not protect you.”

“Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless.”

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”

“If prose is a house, poetry is a man on fire running quite fast through it.”