fuckyeahstephenfry:

rowanboat:

“Imagine a piano keyboard: 88 keys, only 88 and yet, and yet, hundreds of new melodies, new tunes, new harmonies are being composed upon hundreds of different keyboards every day in Dorset alone. Our language, tiger, our language: hundreds of thousands of available words, frillions of legitimate new ideas, so that I can say the following sentence and be utterly sure that nobody has ever said it before in the history of human communication: ‘Hold the newsreader’s nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.’ Perfectly ordinary words, but never before put in that precise order. A unique child delivered of a unique mother.

And yet, oh, and yet, we, all of us, spend all our days saying to each other the same things time after weary time: ‘I love you,’ ‘Don’t go in there,’ ‘Get out,’ ‘You have no right to say that,’ ‘Stop it,’ ‘Why should I,’ ‘That hurt,’ ‘Help,’ ‘Marjorie is dead.’ Hmm? That, surely, is a thought to take out for a cream tea on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”