“I wonder at my incapacity for easy banter, smooth conversation, empty words to fill awkward moments. I don't have a closet filled with umms and ellipses ready to insert at the beginnings and ends of sentences. I don't know how to be a verb, an adverb, any kind of modifier. I'm a noun through and through.”

“In my closet I have boxes and boxes of secrets. These boxes are all empty, and that’s how you know they’re filled with secrets.”

“I wanted my own words. But the ones I use have been dragged through I don't know how many consciences.”

“Nouns and verbs are the guts of the language. Beware of covering up with adjectives and adverbs.”

“His sentences didn't seem to have any verbs, which was par for a politician. All nouns, no action. ”

“Whatever language we speak, before we begin a sentence we have an almost infinite choice of words to use. A, The, They, Whereas, Having, Then, To, Bison, Ignorant, Since, Winnemucca, In, It, As . . . Any word of the immense vocabulary of English may begin an English sentence. As we speak or write the sentence, each word influences the choice of the next ― its syntactical function as noun, verb, adjective, etc., its person and number if a pronoun, its tense and number as a verb, etc. ,etc. And as the sentence goes on, the choices narrow, until the last word may very likely be the only one we can use.”