The Translator Quotes

“In Latin, translate comes from translatus, to carry over, to carry across. Something written in language A is carried over into language B. I always imagine a bridge in which language A is traveling over to meet B. Sometimes when I’m translating, the languages blend together in my mind, and when I hear this, what gets carried over isn’t a grandiose idea. The songs merge together and what is brought forth is a new song. Such stunning and mysterious harmony. That probably sounds silly, but it’s the closest I’ve come to believing in something more, something other than this, something of awe that humbles me. Not a god, but a sound.”
― Nina Schuyler, The Translator

“Every situation, every person has a melody playing, even if you can’t hear it.”
― Nina Schuyler, The Translator

“You’re the word master. It’s clear that you put a lot of value on this idea of resilience, and you’ve decided I don’t have an ounce of it. In your grade book, I get a big fat zero. Have you ever considered there are other values that might be important to someone besides resilience? Such as experiencing the full spectrum of human emotion? Guess what? I don’t have a one-year or five-year plan. I’m here to experience life, and that includes being present for all of it, not just a small lousy corner of it labeled joy or mirth. Even going through the miserable pain of loss and down the long road of grief.”
― Nina Schuyler, The Translator

“Yes, Brigitte, I do believe in something. Not an afterlife or a god, but my work. In her mind, what she has done to Kobayashi’s novel is sacrilegious.”
― Nina Schuyler, The Translator

“guess you’ve never met someone who doesn’t fit neatly into one of your labels. Or maybe you’ve never really understood anyone because I don’t think any human being fits neatly into one of your damn labels. It’s a simple way of viewing the world. And you are the worse for it because what doesn’t fit the label is blocked out.”
― Nina Schuyler, The Translator

“You can only speak from the circumstances you currently find yourself in; change the circumstances and you might have an entirely different view of things.”
― Nina Schuyler, The Translator

“I was walking down the street yesterday and stopped at a puddle,” he says. “The sun was shining and the puddle was glimmering and sparkling. Cars were zooming by, people rushing behind me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. It was holding light and dark, the road beneath it, the clouds and sky overhead. The longer I looked, the more I saw. Not just the road beneath, but the dirt and the rocks and the worms, and above, the birds and the stars, the entire galaxy. I haven’t felt this alive since—I can’t remember.”
― Nina Schuyler, The Translator

“An entire wall of books. She’s read them all, but by now most of them, because of the passage of time, are reduced to a sentence in her mind. That one, a man on a long journey; the book next to it, a woman going through a hellish divorce; the next, a day at the beach and a dinner party. Condensed and summarized, they sound trivial.”
― Nina Schuyler, The Translator

“Hanne would not crush her daughter to fit some terrible average, some awful norm.”
― Nina Schuyler, The Translator