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Words outlive people, institutions, civilizations. Words spur images, associations, memories, inspirations and synapse pulsations. Words send off physical resonations of thought into the nethersphere. Words hurt, soothe, inspire, demean, demand, incite, pacify, teach, romance, pervert, unite, divide. Words be powerful.

Words played an important part in my growing up. Not only the written word... but words that flew through the air: jokes, riddles, puns.

I was always influenced by language.

It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.

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 always thought of words as art supplies.

I remember learning new words, trying to figure out what common things like cider, finding myself upset that my parents couldn't help me understand this new culture, that it was up to me to interpret for them as well as myself.

Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.

Some of the substance of English words, I just don't understand at all because the culture's so strange to me.

The meanings of words and the uses of words come from practice from the way people in a given culture use those words.