Life has obliged him to remember so much useful knowledge that he has lost not only his history but his whole original cargo of useless knowledge history languages literatures the higher mathematics or what you will - are all gone.

Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated.

Building technical systems involves a lot of hard work and specialized knowledge: languages and protocols coding and debugging testing and refactoring.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images devious and prejudicial language dubious linkages weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks.'

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Richard Hugo taught me that anyone with a desire to write an ear for language and a bit of imagination could become a writer. He also in a way gave me permission to write about northern Montana.

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas play with language solve problems use my imagination and draw on my own childhood.

The moment of inspiration can come from memory or language or the imagination or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.

The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.