Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts

Friday, April 18, 2008

Naking

The word naked was originally a past participle; the naked man was the man who had undergone a process of naking, that is, of stripping or peeling (you used the verb of nuts and fruit). Time out of mind the naked man has seemed to our ancestors not the natural but the abnormal man; not the man who has abstained from dressing but the man who has been for some reason undressed.

-C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 104.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Words

Words came spilling out of him before he knew their meaning, and if there was none to listen, he'd talk to his own ten toes. He didn't care a fig for what he talked about. One matter would serve him as well as another. He'd prattle of Normans or crops or weather till the spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth, and if you made a move to flee, there'd come to his eyes a haunted look, and he'd prattle all the faster so you'd find no chink to flee him through. Words were the line that moored him to the world, I think, and he thought if ever that line should break, he'd be forever cast adrift.

-Frederick Buechner, Godric, 13.