“When Wilde describes the flowering thorn bush? Obviously, he’s talking about a rose bush. But he calls it a flowering thorn bush. He’s fundamentally changed our perception of that plant by making it all about thorns and minimizing the role of the flower, of the rose, even though the rose is beautiful and the thorn is hurtful. I thought that was so brilliant at the time, and it made me realize and notice how people—manipulative people—used language. What they decide to focus on, what they describe and what they leave out of their description. They use language to change the perspectives and
...more
