[The] words, rising up, form a thick cloud over the city, which every so often must be thoroughly cleansed of too much language. Men and women in balloons fly up from the main square and, armed with mops, and scrubbing brushes, do battle with the canopy of words trapped under the sun.

The words resist erasure. The oldest and most stubborn form a thick crust of chattering rage. Cleaners have been bitten by words still quarrelling, and in one famous lawsuit a woman whose mop had been eaten and whose hand was badly mauled by a visous row sought to bring the original antagonists to court. The men responsible made their defense on the grounds that the words no longer belonged to them.
(p.17)

That night two lovers whispering underthe lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the words tumbled over him in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves.
(p.19)

FromJeanette Winterson (1989) Sexing the Cherry. Bloomsbury.