Metaphor isn't just a fancy turn of speech. It shapes our thoughts and feelings, reaches out to grasp new experience, and even binds our five disparate senses. James Geary's fascinating and utterly readable I is an Other brings the news on metaphor from literature and economics, from neuroscience and politics, illuminating topics from consumer behavior to autism spectrum disorders to the evolution of language. As a writer, as a teacher, and as someone just plain fascinated by how our minds work, I've been waiting years for exactly this book.

Only half of writing is saying what you mean. The other half is preventing people from reading what they expected you to mean.

All work is the avoidance of harder work.

The best way to know your faults is to notice which ones you accuse others of.

If you do more than your share you'd better want to: otherwise, you're paying yourself in a currency recognized nowhere else.

Nothing important comes with instructions.

Any virtue systematically applied becomes a vice. Morality is attention, not system.