“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.”

“She tasted sweet, like oranges, liquid sunshine in my mouth as we kissed, our tongues playing together.”

“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.”

“The tongue is the most remarkable. For we use it both to taste out sweet wine and bitter poison, thus also do we utter words both sweet and sour with the same tongue.”

“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.”

“Of all the organs, ' said Nehemiah Trot, 'the tongue is the most remarkable. For we use it both to taste our sweet wine and bitter poison, thus also do we utter words both sweet and sour with the same tongue. Go to her! Talk to her!”