Action is eloquence?

What says more? What means more? Someone telling you things? Or, someone demonstrating things?

Action is eloquence. Of course it can be.

But words are deeply powerful. I am in love with words. Used well, or dangerously well, words change the world.

Words, words, words, words, words. So exceptionally beautiful, poetic, powerful, damaging, cruel, romantic... They can reach into the nerve endings of your solar plexus and the cavities of your heart, the synapses of your brain, and squeeze hard...

Words: so convincing to an ear that wants to be seduced by something or someone – from the blue-eyed boys who shave their heads and goose-step, to the potential lover. You hear all sorts of meaningful things within the neutral when you want to. You reinforce your good, phase out your bad, and if not careful, are driven mad.

A look, however, can say much, and effortlessly – a world can pass from one person to another in one glance. Touch can be unbearably wonderful or simply unbearable. Scent is a purely limbic thing and will repel or attract at some level.

Taste? A tricky one... The taste of a longed-for kiss prefaced by a look and the exchange of words (however mundane they seem to the not-looked-at) would be the best scenario, surely? Maybe words, used alone, would lose out in such circumstances. Unless you were Shakespeare and had the power to conjure with people's minds.

I love words that cut to the chase, like heat-seeking missiles. Words: a rather apt anagram of sword. They should be treated with all due respect.

These words make me cry, always:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
(W B Yeats)

Many of the poems of John Keats touch me, too, especially Ode to a Nightingale and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. They make me more heady than any wine ever could.

I can't say I recall every word or remember every verse. In fact, I don't. I don't want to sully something so simply 'right' by tearing it apart and intellectualising. That's partly why I didn't study English beyond O-level (A grades in lang and lit, I'll have you know, back in the day).

I used to sit in class and wonder at how some of my English teachers had the audacity to stand there and theorise about what is so subjective, so personal, and then – horror – criticise it. How the hell did they know exactly what the author meant? One idiotic female teacher almost made me cry/scream because of her cynicism and lack of teaching ability. How I wish I could meet her now...

Mr Coleman, however, is a teacher I will never forget, and for the right reasons. It is partly down to him that I love words as much as I do. He conveyed his love of literature beautifully. I do wonder what happened to him and hope life has been good to him. I recall reading the part of Lady Macbeth (out loud) in class as he read the part of Macbeth. I was shy and many of the girls were in awe of him. It was embarrassing but delightful.

I remember Mr Coleman's disappointment when, in my review of Kes, I complained that there "was too much detail". I regretted my comment for years. "So, you didn't like it then?" he wrote in small, neat red ink. I replied with something like: "Oh, I did, really. Just preferred Lord of the Flies and Macbeth...". I felt awful.

If I close my eyes – or even if I don't – I am back in that sunny, first-floor classroom overlooking the playing field. I'm sitting next to a dear friend, a smiley 15-year-old, who tragically didn't live beyond 20; there are piles of books, a blackboard, chalk, desks, wooden chairs, and a lift in my heart at the start of double English, with Mr Coleman at the front of the class.

As a child, I fantasised about quiet Cambridge libraries with wooden walls, high ceilings, dark corners and precious books; it's an image and longing that will never leave me. But when I choose to dip in and immerse myself in certain words, I am transported.