To communicate, put your words in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.

The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads Scientia Est Potentia - "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you.

You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.

In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.'

When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.

I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.

I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.