“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.”

“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.”

“This must be the taste of Language—the tongue mapped by many colors,parsed by the vowels of memory, the roofof the mouth the dome of a worldcircumscribed by consonants, whose edgessuggest the sour-sweetness of oranges,the bittermelon’s green rind, the river-scent of mangoes all the way to the grove.”

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

“I caught one last glimpse of her face, howling something at me.There were too many vowels in what she said, and they were in an unkind order. ("Substitutions")”

“No one dared agree with her. She was temperamental in the best of times, and pregnancy wasn't one of them. No one wanted to risk their neck, not when her apron said it all: K*SS MY *SS—Would you like to buy a vowel?”