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Literary #170

Literary #170: And then, after they had ripped out half of her pages, they turned her into a movie.

Literary #169

Literary #169: I almost always take a book with me everywhere I go. It's become something of a security blanket.

Literary #168

Literary #168: Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.

Literary #167

Literary #167: If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.

Literary #166

Literary #166: Schlimmbesserung is a German word to describe an effort to make things better that actually ends up making things worse.

Literary #165

Literary #165: Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

Literary #164

Literary #164: True book addicts sneeze with their eyes open so they don't miss a word.

Literary #163

Literary #163: Dear people who type in all lowercase, we are the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse. Sincerely, Capital Letters.

Literary #162

Literary #162: The pen is the sword.

Literary #161

Literary #161: Why English Is So Hard. We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes, but the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes. Then one fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese. You may find a lone mouse or a whole nest of mice, but the plural of house is houses, not hice. If the plural of man is always called men, why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen? The cow in the plural may be cows or kine, but a bow if repeated is never called bine. And the plural of vow is vows, never vine. If I speak of a foot and you show me your feet, and I give you a boot would a pair be called beet? If one is a tooth, and a whole set are teeth,
why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth? If the singular’s this and the plural is these, should the plural of kiss ever be nicknamed keese? Then one may be that and three would be those, yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not cose. We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
but though we say mother, we never say methren. Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, but imagine the feminine she, shis and shim. So the English, I think, you all will agree, is the queerest language you ever did see.

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