I have every reason to believe that an individual man or woman fluent in several tongues seduces, possesses, remembers differently according to his or her use of the relevant language.
George SteinerRead
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I have every reason to believe that an individual man or woman fluent in several tongues seduces, possesses, remembers differently according to his or her use of the relevant language.
She was fluent in four languages and yet her fists against the rusted hood were the fullest articulation of her defeat.
You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.
It was important to me to become day-to-day fluent and functional in another language, and about 10 years ago, I went to Rome for the first time and felt an instant gut connection and wanted to get to know the city.
By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.
The wild woman is fluent in the language of dreams, images, passion, and poetry.
And human instinct is ancient and reliable, utterly mysterious and possibly capable of great genius. I believe that refined, fluent instincts are a person's most valuable asset. My own instincts have repeatedly guided me against the grain of logic and probability. When I have trusted and followed their direction, they have never been wrong. I don't know how or why. But I know that every significant experience-positive or negative-sharpens them and makes them more accurate.
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