Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself in the act of making a mistake.

A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.

I am kind of a curmudgeonly person, so I don't gravitate to groups or traditions, which is probably just pretentious of me.

Philosophy - hopeless. Yet it gives me hope.

At least half of your mind is always thinking, I'll be leaving; this won't last. It's a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I'm just sad.

Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate.

Comfortable means gradually more and more flattened down, more and more blunt - less and less sharp and biting into you.