Norman Lebrecht, The Song of Names

'Is like music. You play good, the notes form structure, make sense. Is good ice-cream.'

Between spoonfuls, his eyes darted round my room like searchlights. He had yet to utter a superfluous word, let alone a definite or indefinite article. He must have had a vocabulary of a hundred useful nouns and verbs, but he used each word like a naked sword, unsheathed of social nicety.