The Enterprise

"...when it comes to representing the outer world, no painting can compare to a window pane. This principle applies much more forcibly to literature, because there is no verbal equivalent of the window pane.  Words can describe things only approximately: all they do with any real accuracy is hang together, in puns, metaphor, assonances, and the self-contained fictions of grammar and syntax."

Northrup Frye
Creation & Recreation