I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. They told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy, I was deprived. Then they told me underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.

-Feiffer,Jules
  Cartoon caption.

Syntax and vocabularyare overwhelming constraintsötherulesthat runus.Language isusing us to talköwe think we're using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we're its slavish agents.

-Mathews, Harry Burchell
  Interview in City Limits, 26 May.

Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of vocabularyand syntax to mislead their weak minds.

-Sayers, Dorothy L(eigh)
  'The Psychology of Advertising', in The Spectator,19 Nov.

[There is] an undercurrent of emotion bred of the deep acquaintance that can take a landscape and its inhabitantsto be a vocabulary, a set of wordlesssymbols effortlessly shared.

-Updike,John Hoyer
  On the artist Edward Hopper. In theWashington Post, 25 Jun.

One forgets words as one forgets names.One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

-Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn
  Diary entry, 25 Dec.