If you need PROOF of how the oral relates to the written, CONSIDER that many great novelists, INCLUDING Joyce and Hemingway, NEVER submitted a piece of work without reading it aloud.

I've been working to SEE that MENTAL health is raised in both oral and written QUESTION sessions in parliament.

A GOOD part of 'The Information' is about the TRANSITION from an oral to a literary culture. Books effected such a great TRANSFORMATION in the way we think about the world, our history, our logic, MATHEMATICS, you name it. I think we WOULD be greatly diminished as a people and as a culture if the book became obsolete.

If you read the fables, 'Beowulf,' for EXAMPLE, you will know something about the person who WRITES them, and I LIKE that. Secondly, they will not be about individuals; they will be about community. Thirdly, they're all about moralizing. Fourthly, the way they express themselves takes its tone from the oral TRADITION.

What I really had was STORIES, the oral TRADITIONS of my parents. We moved so much that that was really our encyclopedia. A DREAM world told to me from my parents in the LIVING ROOM.

My great INSPIRATION has ALWAYS been Studs Terkel, who is a wonderful American oral historian. He was a radio DJ at FIRST, interviewed a LOT of JAZZ musicians, and at some point started to interview Americans about work.

I KNOW I'm not a GREAT WRITER. I'm an extremely GIFTED oral communicator, but when it comes to writing, I'm just a beginner.

Mushy FOOD is a form of sensory deprivation. In the same way that a dark, SILENT ROOM will EVENTUALLY DRIVE you to hallucinate, the mind rebels against bland, single-texture foods, edibles that do not engage the oral device.

There can't be a PURE myth, especially when the myth has been handed down in the oral TRADITION. As the STORIES are told, they change. If the stories don't change they just die.