The truth is that the past exists no more than the future, even though it feels as though it does. - Terry Eagleton

Ivory towers are as rare as bowling alleys in tribal cultures.

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur "Thou still unravished bride of quietness," then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.

Language always pre-exists us: it is always already 'in place', waiting to assign us our places within it.