What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.
Memories, even hard memories, grew soft like peaches as they grow older.
Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.
Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.
Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.
But one thing she [Rachel] did believe in was love. She believed that you could smell it, that you could taste it, that it could change the entire course of your life.
Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map.
Your perception of the world is. . . really a fabrication of your model of the world. You don't really see light or sound. You perceive it because your model says this is how the world is, and those patterns invoke the model. It's hard to believe, but it really is true.
What matters is that you are doing what you think is right based on the standards which you hold.
John Kerry had surgery on his right shoulder this week to repair some damage. It was pretty bad, he had no feeling. It was almost like he was a Republican.
The passion of acquiring riches in order to support a vain expense corrupts the purest souls.