Growing up politics never trickled down to the areas we come from. But people from Obama's camp and Obama himself reached out to me and asked for my help on the campaign. We've sat and had dinner and we've spoken on the phone. He's a very sharp guy. Very charming. Very cool.

No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English Mandarin or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today.

As I wrote I found that Aibileen had some things to say that really weren't in her character. She was older soft-spoken and she started showing some attitude.

You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.

Probably only an art-worlder like me could assign deeper meaning to something as simple and silly as Tebowing. But to us anytime people repeat a stance or a little dance alone or together we see that it can mean something. Imagistic and unspoken language is our thing.

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English but with not one recognizable syllable.