William H. Gass

Children collect nouns, bugs, bottle caps, seashells, verbs: what’s that?  What’s it doing now?  Who’s this? And with the greed which rushes through them like rain down gulleys, they immediately grasp the prepositions of belonging and the pronouns of possessions.  But how often do they ask how cold it is, what color, how loud, rare, warm, responsive, kin, how soft, how wet, how noxious, loving, indisreet, how sour?