What I value in books is lucidity. I want the language to be rich; I love lexical fireworks on the page, but I have to know what it means. I want to be surprised and delighted, not merely baffled.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There is something like an explosion in the meaning of certain words: they have a greater value than their meaning in the dictionary.
Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.
When you become fluent with language, it means you can write an entry in your journal or tell a joke to someone or write a letter to a friend. And it's similar with new technologies.
As for most writers, language is vital for me: a writer's ability to render a fictional world - characters, landscape, emotions - into something original that alters or deepens my understanding of both literature and life.
I'm very sensitive to the English language. I studied the dictionary obsessively when I was a kid and collect old dictionaries. Words, I think, are very powerful and they convey an intention.
To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.
My hope is for a literature that raises the language above the ordinary, makes words both functional and emotional, and to resonate at the frequency of the human spirit - the skill and insight of the writer lifting the parochial novel above the level of regional concern. Making it personal, national, and universal.
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
Usefulness! It is not a fascinating word, and the quality is not one of which the aspiring spirit can dream o' nights, yet on the stage it is the first thing to aim at.
I have always loved the fluidity of language - delighting in dialects, dictionaries, slang and neologisms.