I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.
I learned to love the feel of good words.
I do love perusing the dictionary to find how many words I don't use - words that have specific, sharp, focused meaning. I also love the sound of certain words. I love the sound of the word pom-pom.
I never met a word I didn't love
Words. I had always loved them. I collected them, like I had collected pretty stones as a child. I liked to roll words over my tongue like a lump of molten honeycomb, savouring the sweetness, the crackle, the crunch.
I like to relish words and sentences, and phraseology, and there's not much facility for that [playing Maigret].
'Constitutional' is just a real pip of a word. Positively rolls off the tongue. In fact, it's downright fun to say. 'Con-stit-too-shun-al.' It's the verbal equivalent of skipping down the street with an ice cream cone in your hand. It's like a semantic bag of Lays potato chips. You simply can't just say it once.
I love British cursing - the cadence of it, the joy in the sound of the words, and the vulgarity of it.
I would like The Discovery of Poetry to be a field guide to the natural pleasures of language - a happiness we were born to have.
