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

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

The problem with anger against God is that it's impossible to go higher in the system to complain.

Traveling tends to magnify all human emotions.

The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.

She was transparent, like a watercolor. As if she were about to dissolve in sound, in tones not yet created.

Maybe it's wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they were always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.