He taught me that language was rubbery, plastic. It wasn't, as I thought, something you just use, but something you can play with. Words were made up of little bits that could be shuffled, turned back to front, remixed. They could be tucked and folded into other words to produce unexpected things. It was like cookery, like alchemy. Language hid more than it revealed.
Mal Peet, Tamar
language, words