“Now, look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word.”

“Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life.”

“The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. The boys have gone hog-wild with liberty, yet the short flat terms used over and over, both in dialogue and narrative, add neither vigor nor clarity; the effect is not of shock but of something far more dangerous — tedium.”

“So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'" Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead.”

“And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.”

“Now to me, Edith looks like something that would eat her young.”

“Little WordsWhen you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;And I can only stare, and shape my griefIn little words.I cannot conjure loveliness, to drownThe bitter woe that racks my cords apart.The weary pen that sets my sorrow downFeeds at my heart.There is no mercy in the shifting year,No beauty wraps me tenderly about.I turn to little words- so you, my dear,Can spell them out.”