“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

“I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.”

“You think—I dare say that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it We’re destroying words—scores of them hundreds of them every day. It’s a beautiful thing the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms there are also the antonyms.”

“Words are powerful. Words make a difference. They can create and destroy. They can open doors and close doors. Words can create illusion or magic, love or destruction. … All those things.”

“Beautiful. All this suffering at the moment of destruction.”

“And they would all smile at the beauty of destruction.”