Babel-17

by Samuel R. Delany

“I know what you’re trying to say; and you don’t know what I’m trying to say. It’s not fair!” She nearly rose from her seat.

“And now I have things to say that are all my own. They’re not what other people have said before, put in an original way. And they’re not just violent contradictions of what other people have said, which amounts to the same thing. They’re new—and I’m scared to death.”

“He weighs two hundred and seventy pounds and he’s only five nine. Have you met a fat person yet who wasn’t mean as a rat underneath it all?”

Context: I'm fat and I think this is funny as hell.

We have to go to another language in order to think about the problem clearly without going through all sorts of roundabout paths for the proper aspects of what we want to deal with.”

“Sometimes I believe, Captain Wong, that without the Invasion, something for the Alliance to focus its energies upon, our society would disintegrate.

Rydra held the soft, malleable fingers as short a time as politeness allowed and returned the smile. She remembered, as a little girl, being obliged not to cry through punishment. Having to smile was worse.

An individual, a thing apart from its environment, and apart from all things in that environment; an individual was a type of thing for which symbols were inadequate, and so names were invented.

All four sounds took less time on her tongue and in her mind than the one clumsy diphthong in “room.” Babel-17; she had felt it before with other languages, the opening, the widening, the mind forced to sudden growth. But this, this was like the sudden focusing of a lens blurry for years.

“We live dangerously,” Tarik went on. “Perhaps that is why we live well. We are civilized—when we have time.

Appreciation is not a warm feeling, Rydra realized, but cool, and makes your back relax at the same time that you smile.

“Actually,” Dr. T’mwarba went on, “it’s psychologically important to feel in control of your body, that you can change it, shape it. Going on a six-month diet or a successful muscle building program can give quite a sense of satisfaction. So can a new nose, chin, or set of scales and feathers.”