"A unification of fact and value" is an excellent definition, it seems to me, of any given word in any given language. So words bloom into novels ... and the large problem grows out of the small: to assemble words so they work together with something approaching the same force of unified fact and value that each word has accrued in its long, accumulating passage through history. Words are the model, words are the tools, words are the boards, words are the nails.

Richard Rhodes