Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.

The ancient Greek "oral poets" all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember.

From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.

While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.

For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.

You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.

My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.