Flybyreader

“Words and phrases you think are carved into your bones can disappear in no time.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“That's the beauty of learning a new language. It should feel like an enormous undertaking. It ought to intimidate you. It makes you appreciate the complexity of the ones you know already.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language; there was no candidate, not English, not French, that could bully and absorb enough to become one. Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No, a thousand worlds within one. And translation - a necessary endeavour, however futile, to move between them”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Mankind is inherently inclined towards cooperation," Holmes said. It is how we create societies and moral consensus. We want to agree with one another, on the whole. Thus, if one of us insists a certain thing is true, and maintains his standpoint in the face of all opposition, others will eventually come around to his way of thinking.”
― James Lovegrove, Sherlock Holmes & the Christmas Demon