“I've become attracted, obsessed-- and mad.I want to touch your vowels and your consonants”

“Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel.”

“When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.”

“Oh that voice, so sweet. Rich, like the taste of vanilla ice cream, vowels like flute music, warm caramel consonants. She could float in that voice forever and not miss a thing.”

“Focus can become an obsession... But your ability to sustain the drive to focus will depend upon how enjoyable and productive it is. So create an environment that makes you want to remain focused.”

“You said somewhere that you would like to write in one of the Nordic languages because they have more vowels, and vowels are more serious.’You:‘Did I say that? But Latin languages have more vowels than Nordic ones! I think what I meant was that I would like to write in one of those ancient northern tongues which were almost entirely made up on vowels. I’ve always felt it had something to do with the climate. They were hot languages, insulated by all those heaped up vowels.’Me:‘Ancient Hebrew only had consonants. Presumably so that there was no risk of them accidentally writing the secret name of God.’You:‘Or perhaps that was to do with the climate too. Consonants were more open and airy, more suited to a language of the desert.’‘You also said that you hated sans serif typefaces.’‘Oh, yes, they’re terrible! All those naked letters, reduced to their stark scaffolding. No-one can possibly recognise their mother tongue when printed in a Futura typeface. It lacks maternal warmth, it lacks friendliness.’‘I fear Cuervo may be right: we are somewhat unscientific.’‘And prejudiced too. Vowels can be dispensed with. A text written solely using vowels would be illegible, but in a text using only consonants, one could guess the vowels. A text in which X replaced all the Os, as in that story by Poe, might prove difficult to read, but would, ultimately, be decipherable.”