We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard. More than that, we speak volumes. Our language is the language of everything we have not read. Shakespeare and the Authorised Version surface in supermarkets, on buses, chatter on radio and television. I find this miraculous. I never cease to wonder at it. That words are more durable than anything, that they blow with the wind, hibernate and reawaken, shelter parasitic on the most unlikely hosts, survive and survive and survive.
— from Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
This sounds familiar...I believe this very excerpt is in my commonplace book :) I LOVE Penelope Lively. Did I mention that? lol
Posted by: Melwyk | March 02, 2011 at 09:51 PM
Ha! Actually, Melanie, it's thanks to your enthusiasm for Ms. Lively that I am finally reading her work. And I LOVE it!!
Posted by: patricia | March 03, 2011 at 10:53 AM
She is really good. I am reading "Consequences".
Posted by: Junior Vondrake | March 14, 2011 at 01:02 AM