“Seire,” I said, the phrase bubbling up from someplace deep inside my heart. Be victorious. Another word, a phrase I’d never learned, that had magically planted itself in my brain. “I always am,” she replied without turning back. “Go. You have a job to do.”

“There are words in my life that I wish I'd never said. I wish I'd never told my wife that I loved her, because then I had to line up all my actions with those words. I had to always act like that was true. And those three words, I love you, should never be used if you don't mean them. My lying has meant I will never get to use them on anyone else. I went against my own truth, my own heart, and there is really no coming back from that.”

“Words. I'm surrounding by thousands of words. Maybe millions...Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs...I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.”

“I come from a land afar and a land up high. My abilities are only eclipsed by my excellent turn of phrase and if you open your mind, they could be your abilities too.”

“I can’t even hear the phrase ‘Four score and seven years ago’ without thinking of what?” my mom asked.
“A top hat and a beard,” I replied.”

“I am tied down with single words. But you wander off; you slip away; you rise up higher, with words and words in phrases.”