Clichés – avoid these like the plague. “Corrupt men with dead souls simply repeat

stale phrases. Like Senator Trent Lott, they use the word suck without bothering

to let a picture form in their minds.

Since all language is “fossil

poetry,” almost every phrase is a cliché. We cannot write every phrase entirely

new or we’ll end up as incomprehensible as Gertrude Stein. But that is no excuse

for wallowing in the worst of the cesspool. We can strain against fate and fight

against habit and, who knows? maybe even create some new phrases in the

process. To leave a new phrase or word behind is to have expanded the

collective consciousness and to have more than justified one’s existence. Good

writers are the heroes who free us from the tyrannies of clichés and open up the

future. Vocabula Review