If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

To describe society since the mid twentieth century -- global, multilingual, infinitely interlinked -- we need the global, intuitional language of fantasy.

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid.

We're not outside the world... We are the world. We're its language. So we live and it lives. You see? If we don't say the words, what is their in our world?

We’re not outside the world, yoz. You know? We are the world. We’re its language. So we live and it lives. You see? If we don’t say the words, what is there in our world?

There is not much you can say about a baby unless you are talking with its father or another mother or nurse; infants are not part of the realm of ordinary language, talk is inadequate to them as they are inadequate to talk.

Heaven and earthbegin in the unnamed:name’s the motherof the ten thousand things.