“Over the years, my church gave me passage into a menagerie of exotic words unknown in the South: "introit," "offertory," "liturgy," "movable feast," "the minor elevation," "the lavabo," "the apparition of Lourdes," and hundreds more. Latin deposited the dark minerals of its rhythms on the shelves of my spoken language. You may find the harmonics of the Common of the Mass in every book I've ever written. Because I was raised Roman Catholic, I never feared taking any unchaperoned walks through the fields of language. Words lifted me up and filled me with pleasure.”

“There were words for what he meant to me, but if I studied every language ever spoken for the next thousand years, I still wouldn’t find enough of them to describe it.”

“We're pupils of the religions—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish . . . Well, the Christian religions. Those who directed French education down through the centuries were the Jesuits. They taught us how to make sentences translated from the Latin, well balanced, with a verb, a subject, a complement, a rhythm. In short—here a speech, there a preach, everywhere a sermon! They say of an author, “He knits a nice sentence!” Me, I say, “It's unreadable.” They say, “What magnificent theatrical language!” I look, I listen. It's flat, it's nothing, it's nil. Me, I've slipped the spoken word into print. In one sole shot.”

“It’s the Poverty.I lack imagination you say No. I lack language. The language to clarifymy resistance to the literate. Words are a war to me. They threaten my family.To gain the word to describe the loss I risk losing everything. I may create a monster the word’s length and bodyswelling up colorful and thrillinglooming over my mother, characterized.Her voice in the distanceunintelligible illiterate.These are the monster’s words.”

“But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words.”

“God gave me you for the ups and downs. God gave me you for my days of doubt.For when I think I've lost my way, there are no words here left to say, it's true.God gave me you.”