Horrid Words

Words; how loathsome they are and how cruel. How much we can twist them to our benefit or use them to be hated in honest deliberation with ourselves and others. How abhorrently contorted and dishonest they can be and yet how magical. How precise and clear and vivid. Hearts dance when words waltz through the air but they shatter when in our cruelty we use them to break souls. Why can’t we flee from them? From these magical letters that form something out of nothing as if there was a music to them as despairing as a cello or as divine as a lyre. Simple and clear words, is there anything more real than simple words? Is the soul made of magical words or do words make the soul magical?

Melrose Edition of Walter Scott.