When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It's nourishing; it's rejuvenating.

My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen." — Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)

You're the perfect girl', he said, rubbing his chin. 'You expect nothing.

It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.

That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother's palm and fingertips, he was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I'd always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph's part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.

It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.

Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.