But they both knew that words were weapons too, and when fashioned into a story their power was almost limitless.

If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.

Everybody said the same thing over and over again with infinite variations but over and over again until finally if you listened with great intensity you could hear it rise and fall and tell all that there was inside them, not so much by the actual words they said or the thoughts they had but the movement of their thoughts and words endlessly the same and endlessly different.

That's how I gained a lifelong fondness for repeating certain phrases beyond the point of all reason.

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well.

And if you missed a day, there was always the next,
and if you missed a year, it didn't matter,
the hills weren't going anywhere,
the thyme and rosemary kept coming back,
the sun kept rising, the bushes kept bearing fruit–

The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

Reproach is infinite, and knows no end
So voluble a weapon is the tongue;
Wounded, we wound; and neither side can fail
For every man has equal strength to rail.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

While a truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.

The images of men's wit and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the worry of time and capable of perpetual renovation.