In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It's fortunate that I am a writer, because that has helped me understand the properties of words. They are what have made life complex. In the battle for status in the animal kingdom, power and aggressiveness have been all-important. But among humans, once they acquired speech, all that changed.
I was always influenced by language.
It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.
Language is memory and metaphor.
I think with all my books, language has been their subject as much as anything else. Language can elide or displace or sideline whole groups of people. You can't necessarily change the way language is used, but if it becomes something you're conscious of... that gives you a certain power over it.
Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.
I'm a fan of books that are almost languorous in their storytelling. That is a little bit lost sometimes in the modern media that we have.
It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection.
Expressing myself through language was always something that I had had to learn to do more so than others.
I grew up in a house where language was appreciated and cared about. I'm sure that, although I wasn't aware of it at the time, it must have made an impression on me.