There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.

Falling in love has been greatly overrated. Falling in love consists of 45 percent fear of not being accepted, 45 percent manic hope that this time the fear will be put to shame and a modest 10 percent frail awareness of the possibility of love. I don't fall in love any more. Just like I don't get the mumps.

Do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing? ... The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something.

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.

To want to understand is an attempt to recapture something we have lost.

There's a widespread notion that children are open, that the truth about their inner selves just seeps out of them. That's all wrong. No one is more covert than a child, and no one has a greater need to be that way. It's a response to a world that's always using a can opener to open them up to see what's inside, wondering whether it ought to be replaced with a more useful sort of preserves.

Some thoughts have glue on them.----Smilla