John Irving Once Told Me He Doesn't

Using Words To Describe Magic Is Like Using A Screwdriver To Cut Roast Beef.

Certain Individual Words Do Possess More Pitch, More Radiance, More Shazam! Than Others, But It's The Way Words Are Juxtaposed With Other Words In A Phrase Or Sentence That Can Create Magic. Perhaps Literally. The Word "grammar," Like Its Sister Word "glamour," Is Actually Derived From An Old Scottish Word That Meant "sorcery." When We Were Made To Diagram Sentences In High School, We Were Unwittingly Being Instructed In Syntax Sorcery, In Wizardry. We Were All Enrolled At Hogwarts. Who Knew?

The Winter Passed As Slowly And Peacefully As A Boa Constrictor Digesting A Valium Addict.

Let Us, Rather, Gather Facts, All The Facts, Regardless Of Aesthetic Appeal Or Theoretical Social Worth, And Spread Those Facts Before Us Not As The Soothsayer Spreads The Innards Of A Turkey But As A Newspaper Spreads Its Columns. Let Us Be Journalists, Then. And Like All Good Journalists, We Shall Present Our Facts In An Order That Will Satisfy The Famous Five W's: Wow, Whoopee, Wahoo, Why-not And Whew.

The Loony Legacy Of Money Was That The Arithmetic By Which Things Were Measured Had Become More Valuable Than The Things Themselves.