Thursday, October 20, 2005

Adjectives and nouns...and centipedes

For I think we respect nouns (and what we think they stand for) too much. All my deepest, and certainly my earliest, experiences, seem of be of sheer quality. The terrible and the lovely are older and solider than terrible and lovely things. If a musical phrase could be translated into words at all it would become an adjective. A great lyric is very like a long, utterly adequate adjective.

C S Lewis – Letters to Malcolm – chapter XVI

Lewis putting paid to all those writing teachers who insist adjectives are very secondary in the scheme of things.

....who can dance no better than a centipede with wooden legs.

C S Lewis – Letters to Malcolm – chapter XVII

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