“Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. That’s one of the things I try to teach my students – how to write piercingly. But what on earth’s the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing – you know, like the very hardest X-rays – when you’re writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing?”
