Thomas

“A sense of pleasure or satisfaction with a dictionary is possible. It might arise when finding confirmation of a word’s guessed spelling (i.e., i before e), or upon retrieving from it a word that had momentarily come loose from the tip of your tongue. The pleasure of reading rather than using a dictionary might come when amongst its pages you find a word that is new to you and neatly sums up a sensation, quality or experience that had hitherto gone nameless: a moment of solidarity and recognition—someone else must have had the same sensation as me—I am not alone! Pleasure may come with the sheer glee at the textures of an unfamiliar word, its new taste between your teeth. Glume. Forb. The anatomy of a word strimmed clean or porched in your teeth.”
― Eley Williams, The Liar's Dictionary

“Okla ete ablotse. ‘My spirit has traveled abroad even if my body has not.”
― Catherine E. McKinley, Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World

“To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in any place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and the when in which you vanished.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

“The first sensation this book should convey is what I feel when I hear the telephone ring; I say “should” because I doubt that written words can give even a partial idea of it: it is not enough to declare that my reaction is one of refusal, of flight from this aggressive and threatening summons, as it is also a feeling of urgency, intolerableness, coercion that impels me to obey the injunction of that sound, rushing to answer even though I am certain that nothing will come of it save suffering and discomfort.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler